"[Epitaph on Mrs Clerke]"

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Commentary: Notes/Queries: 37 (Textual [T]: 20, Explanatory [E]: 17)

Notes			Line	Text
T	E	T/E		"[Epitaph on Mrs Clerke]"

T	E	T/E	1	Lo! where this silent marble weeps,
	E		2	A friend, a wife, a mother sleeps:
			3	A heart, within whose sacred cell
T			4	The peaceful virtues loved to dwell.
			5	Affection warm, and faith sincere,
	E		6	And soft humanity were there.
T	E	T/E	7	In agony, in death, resigned,
T	E	T/E	8	She felt the wound she left behind.
T	E	T/E	9	Her infant image, here below,
T	E	T/E	10	Sits smiling on a father's woe:
	E		11	Whom what awaits, while yet he strays
	E		12	Along the lonely vale of days?
T			13	A pang, to secret sorrow dear;
			14	A sigh; an unavailing tear;
			15	Till time shall every grief remove,
			16	With life, with memory, and with love.

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Note on the text

Composition / Publication: 1758 / 1758 (pr. 1759)	Form: aa
Original Text: 1758	Genre: Epitaph
Editorial information: A brief introduction and a list of MS witnesses is available. Spelling has been modernized throughout, except in case of conscious archaisms. Contractions, italics and initial capitalization have been largely eliminated, except where of real import. Obvious errors have been silently corrected, punctuation has been supplied. The editor would like to express his gratitude to the library staff of the Göttingen State and University Library (SUB Göttingen) for their invaluable assistance.
Versions of this text are available in the Digital Library: 1775: The Poems of Mr. Gray. To which are prefixed Memoirs of his Life and Writings by W[illiam]. Mason. York, 1775. 1775: Poems by Mr. Gray. A new edition Edinburgh, 1775. 1776: Poems by Mr. Gray. A new edition London, 1776. 1782: The Poetical Works of Thomas Gray. Edinburg, 1782. 1798: The Poetical Works of Thomas Gray. London, 1798. 1799: The Poetical Works of Thomas Gray. London, [1799]. 1799: The Poetical Works of Thomas Gray, LL.B. London, 1799. 1800: The Poetical Works of Thomas Gray, LL.B. London, 1800. 1800: The Poems of Gray. A new edition. London, 1800. 1805: The Poetical Works of Thomas Gray. London, 1805. 1816: The Works of Thomas Gray, Vol. I. Ed. John Mitford. London, 1816. 1826: The Poetical Works of Thomas Gray. London, 1826. 1836: The Works of Thomas Gray, Volume I. Ed. John Mitford. London, 1836.

Works cited in the commentary

[BrJ_1891] The Poetical Works of Thomas Gray: English and Latin. Edited with an introduction, life, notes and a bibliography by John Bradshaw. The Aldine edition of the British poets series. London: George Bell and sons, 1891.
[GoE_1884] The Works of Thomas Gray: In Prose and Verse. Ed. by Edmund Gosse, in four vols. London: MacMillan and Co., 1884, vol. i.
[HeJ_1981] Thomas Gray: Selected Poems. Ed. by John Heath-Stubbs. Manchester: Carcanet New Press Ltd., 1981.
[LoR_1969] The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins, Oliver Goldsmith. Edited by Roger Lonsdale. Longman Annotated English Poets Series. London and Harlow: Longmans, 1969.
[P/W_1950] The Poems of Gray and Collins. Edited by Austin Lane Poole. Revised by Leonard Whibley. Third edition. Oxford editions of standard authors series. London: Oxford UP, 1937, reprinted 1950 [1st ed. 1919].
[ReJ_1973] The Complete English Poems of Thomas Gray. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by James Reeves. The Poetry Bookshelf series. London: Heinemann; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1973.
[S/H_1966] The Complete Poems of Thomas Gray: English, Latin and Greek. Edited by Herbert W. Starr and J. R. Hendrickson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1966.
[ToD_1922] Gray's English Poems, Original and Translated from the Norse and Welsh. Edited by Duncan C. Tovey. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1922 [1st ed. 1898].

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