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GRAY'S POEMS.
II. 1.
Man's feeble race what ills await![N 1]
Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain,
Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train,
And Death, sad refuge from the storms of fate! 45
The fond complaint, my song, disprove,
And justify the laws of Jove.
Say, has he giv'n in vain the heav'nly Muse?
Night and all her sickly dews,
Her spectres wan, and birds of boding cry, 50



[N 2]

[N 3]

[N 4]

[N 5]

Notes

  1. ↑ V. 42. To compensate the real and imaginary ills of life, the Muse was given to mankind by the same Providence that sends the day, by its cheerful presence, to dispel the gloom and terrors of the night. Gray.
  2. ↑ V. 46. "His fond complaints," Addison. Cato, A. 1, 6.
  3. ↑ V. 49. Wakefield refers to Milton. Hymn to the Nativity, xxvi. and Par. Reg. iv. 419. But a passage in Cowley is pointed out by his last editor, Dr. Hurd, as alluded to by Gray, vol. i. p. 195;
    "Night and her ugly subjects thou dost fright,
    And Sleep, the lazy owl of night;
    A sham'd and fearful to appear,
    They skreen their horrid shapes with the black hemisphere."

    Thomson. Spring, "Sickly damps."
  4. ↑ V. 50. "Love not so much the doleful knell
    And news the boding night-birds tell."
    Green. Grotto, 126.
    "Obscœnique Canes, importunoque Volueres
    Signa dabunt." Virg. Georg. i. v. 470.
    "He withers at the heart, and looks as wan
    As the pale spectre of a murder'd man." Dryden. Pal, and Arcite. B. 1.
  5. ↑ V. 52. "Or seen the morning's well appointed star
    Come marching up the eastern hills afar."
    Cowley. Gray. The couplet from Cowley has been wrongly quoted by Gray, and so continued by his different editors. It occurs in Brutus, an Ode, stan iv. p. 171. vol. 1. Hurd's ed.
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