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Odes by Mr. Gray
Contains ’The Progress of Poesy’ and ’The Bard’.
Printed at Strawberry-Hill, for R. and J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall.
URL links to the Digital edition (scan of book held by Bodleian Library, University of Oxford) at the Thomas Gray Archive.
Printed at Strawberry-Hill, for R. and J. Dodsley in Pall-Mall.
URL links to the Digital edition (scan of book held by Bodleian Library, University of Oxford) at the Thomas Gray Archive.
21 pages, Unknown Binding
First published November 11, 2014
2 people want to read
About the author
Thomas Gray
957 books93 followersThomas Gray was an English poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.
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March 2, 2024
The earliest of Gray's odes are the two which deal with the spring and his old school (Eton) correspondingly. ‘The Ode on Spring’ is an unrelenting piece of subtle portrayal mingled with moralizing and wit. ‘The Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College’ does not, as one might expect, rejoice the greatness of Gray's old school or express the wistfulness usually anticipated from an alumnus. Instead, as he watches the boys at play, he forestalls the adversities and tragedies they are sure to meet in later life.
A boy's contentment and incorruptibility are, says the poet, built on the slight foundations of ignorance and are of brief duration. Both these poems are more or less in the form of Horatian odes, in regular, lyric stanzas. These early odes of Gray have been regarded as "elegant compounds of platitudes, inert conventions, and poetic diction".
In ‘The Progress of Poesy’, as also in ‘The Bard’, Gray uses a metrical scheme that combines the greatest fluidity with the greatest strictness.
In imitation of Pindar he constructs these poems of nine stanzas, divided into groups of three. In each group the first two stanzas are identical, while the third uses a new pattern. Thus Gray uses two stanza-forms, one six times, the other three times. And he is faced with the problem of fitting his varied subject-matter and moods into this strict pattern, while observing the over-all development of his poem's theme and argument.
This is made more complex by the nature of the stanzas used, for it is necessary to use lines of differing lengths and to hold the stanza together by a multipart rhyming scheme which allows the rhymes to be noted by the ear (that is, a rhyme-word must not wait too long for its echo).
How skilful Gray is in this can be seen by comparing the opening lines of each strophe* and anti-strophe. On each occasion Gray has something different to say and the tone is new, though he has to use the same metre.
We do not value a poem simply because it imposes difficulties which the poet has to overcome. But it is one of the reasons why a poem continues to be interesting to other poets and to the reader who values poetry as a "craft". The complexity of metre and structure in Gray's two odes demands careful and repeated study.
In writing Pindaric odes, Gray used a form popular with poets since the time of Dryden. In a structure less complex than Gray uses, it was to he popular with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats.
Pindar, born in the 6th century B.C. wrote his odes to be performed with music and dancing, as part of communal festivals: his epodes are the moments of rest for the dancers. The 18th-century ode has no such function in communal life; it is a highly artificial form which can do no more than imitate some of Pindar's verbal characteristics-not only his structure, but his richness of style and his abrupt transition from subject to subject.
Pindar's transitions are abrupt because his odes were often written to celebrate such events as the winning of a chariot race in the Olympic games, and he needed other matter to fill out his poem.
An 18th century imitator adopted the suddenness for a different reason because it was part of Pindar's bravura and because it seemed to contribute to the sublimity of the poem. Gray, who was a master of horizontal transitions, in these two odes leaves out the links and jumps to the next topic in an alarming manner. In weaker hands this could result in a poem lacking in control and shape.
But Gray's artistic sense is true.
The beauties of these odes include such explicit paraphernalia as are to be found in the lines describing young lovers dancing to "brisk notes", and those which describe the sun rising and dispersing the terrors of night in The Progress of Poesy. The picture of the lonely Bard standing on a rock, with his "haggard eyes", his "loose beard" and "hoary hair streaming, like a meteor, to the troubled air" is very vivid and moving. The lyrical quality of certain lines is purely stunning.
Gray's odes are, then, distinguished by:
(i) personal feeling (except The Bard);
(ii) a dignity of theme;
(iii) an elevation of style approaching sublimity or grandeur;
(iv) a strict observance of the Pindaric technique.
Among their faults are laboriousness, a lack of naturalness, and a use of rhetorical and often "forced" language.
Finally, here is portion of George Saintsbury's observation on these Gray’s odes: "To this stiffness of form they add another of diction and phrase. It is essentially rhetorical poetry; and some of the figures and "machines" which it employs are rather childish, especially the behaviour of Gloucester and Mortimer, the latter of whom seems to have an attack of nerves."
A boy's contentment and incorruptibility are, says the poet, built on the slight foundations of ignorance and are of brief duration. Both these poems are more or less in the form of Horatian odes, in regular, lyric stanzas. These early odes of Gray have been regarded as "elegant compounds of platitudes, inert conventions, and poetic diction".
In ‘The Progress of Poesy’, as also in ‘The Bard’, Gray uses a metrical scheme that combines the greatest fluidity with the greatest strictness.
In imitation of Pindar he constructs these poems of nine stanzas, divided into groups of three. In each group the first two stanzas are identical, while the third uses a new pattern. Thus Gray uses two stanza-forms, one six times, the other three times. And he is faced with the problem of fitting his varied subject-matter and moods into this strict pattern, while observing the over-all development of his poem's theme and argument.
This is made more complex by the nature of the stanzas used, for it is necessary to use lines of differing lengths and to hold the stanza together by a multipart rhyming scheme which allows the rhymes to be noted by the ear (that is, a rhyme-word must not wait too long for its echo).
How skilful Gray is in this can be seen by comparing the opening lines of each strophe* and anti-strophe. On each occasion Gray has something different to say and the tone is new, though he has to use the same metre.
We do not value a poem simply because it imposes difficulties which the poet has to overcome. But it is one of the reasons why a poem continues to be interesting to other poets and to the reader who values poetry as a "craft". The complexity of metre and structure in Gray's two odes demands careful and repeated study.
In writing Pindaric odes, Gray used a form popular with poets since the time of Dryden. In a structure less complex than Gray uses, it was to he popular with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats.
Pindar, born in the 6th century B.C. wrote his odes to be performed with music and dancing, as part of communal festivals: his epodes are the moments of rest for the dancers. The 18th-century ode has no such function in communal life; it is a highly artificial form which can do no more than imitate some of Pindar's verbal characteristics-not only his structure, but his richness of style and his abrupt transition from subject to subject.
Pindar's transitions are abrupt because his odes were often written to celebrate such events as the winning of a chariot race in the Olympic games, and he needed other matter to fill out his poem.
An 18th century imitator adopted the suddenness for a different reason because it was part of Pindar's bravura and because it seemed to contribute to the sublimity of the poem. Gray, who was a master of horizontal transitions, in these two odes leaves out the links and jumps to the next topic in an alarming manner. In weaker hands this could result in a poem lacking in control and shape.
But Gray's artistic sense is true.
The beauties of these odes include such explicit paraphernalia as are to be found in the lines describing young lovers dancing to "brisk notes", and those which describe the sun rising and dispersing the terrors of night in The Progress of Poesy. The picture of the lonely Bard standing on a rock, with his "haggard eyes", his "loose beard" and "hoary hair streaming, like a meteor, to the troubled air" is very vivid and moving. The lyrical quality of certain lines is purely stunning.
Gray's odes are, then, distinguished by:
(i) personal feeling (except The Bard);
(ii) a dignity of theme;
(iii) an elevation of style approaching sublimity or grandeur;
(iv) a strict observance of the Pindaric technique.
Among their faults are laboriousness, a lack of naturalness, and a use of rhetorical and often "forced" language.
Finally, here is portion of George Saintsbury's observation on these Gray’s odes: "To this stiffness of form they add another of diction and phrase. It is essentially rhetorical poetry; and some of the figures and "machines" which it employs are rather childish, especially the behaviour of Gloucester and Mortimer, the latter of whom seems to have an attack of nerves."
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