"Ode on the Spring"

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Go	Notes			Line	Text
	T	E	T/E		"Ode on the Spring"
		E		1	Lo! where the rosy-bosomed Hours,
		E		2	Fair Venus' train, appear,
		E		3	Disclose the long-expecting flowers,
		E		4	And wake the purple year!
		E		5	The Attic warbler pours her throat,
		E		6	Responsive to the cuckoo's note,
		E		7	The untaught harmony of spring:
		E		8	While whispering pleasure as they fly,
		E		9	Cool zephyrs through the clear blue sky
		E		10	Their gathered fragrance fling.
		E		11	Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch
	T	E	T/E	12	A broader browner shade;
		E		13	Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech
		E		14	O'er-canopies the glade,
		E		15	Beside some water's rushy brink
		E		16	With me the Muse shall sit, and think
		E		17	(At ease reclined in rustic state)
		E		18	How vain the ardour of the crowd,
	T	E	T/E	19	How low, how little are the proud,
	T	E	T/E	20	How indigent the great!
		E		21	Still is the toiling hand of Care;
		E		22	The panting herds repose:
		E		23	Yet hark, how through the peopled air
		E		24	The busy murmur glows!
		E		25	The insect youth are on the wing,
		E		26	Eager to taste the honeyed spring,
		E		27	And float amid the liquid noon:
				28	Some lightly o'er the current skim,
		E		29	Some show their gaily-gilded trim
		E		30	Quick-glancing to the sun.
		E		31	To Contemplation's sober eye
		E		32	Such is the race of man:
		E		33	And they that creep, and they that fly,
		E		34	Shall end where they began.
		E		35	Alike the busy and the gay
		E		36	But flutter through life's little day,
		E		37	In fortune's varying colours dressed:
		E		38	Brushed by the hand of rough Mischance,
		E		39	Or chilled by age, their airy dance
		E		40	They leave, in dust to rest.
				41	Methinks I hear in accents low
		E		42	The sportive kind reply:
		E		43	Poor moralist! and what art thou?
		E		44	A solitary fly!
		E		45	Thy joys no glittering female meets,
		E		46	No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets,
	T	E	T/E	47	No painted plumage to display:
	T	E	T/E	48	On hasty wings thy youth is flown;
	T	E	T/E	49	Thy sun is set, thy spring is gone—
	T			50	We frolic, while 'tis May.

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• [BrJ_1903] The Poetical Works of Thomas Gray: English and Latin. Edited with an introduction, life, notes and a bibliography by John Bradshaw. Reprinted edition. The Aldine edition of the British poets series. London: George Bell and sons, 1903 [1st edition 1891].
• [CrJ_1948] Gray: Poetry and Prose. With essays by Johnson, Goldsmith and others. With an Introduction and Notes by J. Crofts. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1948 [1st ed. 1926].
• [EpW_1959] Poems of Thomas Gray. Edited by W. C. Eppstein. London and Glasgow: Blackie & Son Ltd., 1959.
• [F/G_1999] Eighteenth-Century Poetry. An Annotated Anthology. Edited by David Fairer and Christine Gerrard. Blackwell annotated anthologies. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999.
• [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].
• [PhW_1894] Selections from the Poetry and Prose of Thomas Gray. Ed. with an introduction and notes by William Lyon Phelps. The Athenaeum press series. Boston: Ginn & company, 1894.
• [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].