e, as may be noted in
these lines from his best "Rowley" poem, _Aella, a Tragycal
Enterlude_:--

"Sweet his tongue as the throstle's note;
Quick in dance as thought can be."

"Hark! the raven flaps his wing
In the briar'd dell below;
Hark! the death-owl loud doth sing,
To the night-mares as they go."

While Chatterton did not leave enough verse of surpassing merit to
rank him as a great poet, his work nevertheless entitles him to be
chosen from among all his boyish peers to receive the laurel wreath
for song.

The Literature of Melancholy.--The choice of subjects in which the
emotion of melancholy was given full sway shows one direction taken by
the romantic movement. Here, the influence of Milton's _Il Penseroso_
can often be traced. The exquisite _Ode to Evening_, by William
Collins (1721-1759), shows the love for nature's solitudes where this
emotion may be nursed. Lines like these:--

"...be mine the hut,
That, from the mountain's side,
Views wilds and swelling floods,
And hamlets brown, and dim-discovered spires;
And hears their simple bell; and marks o'er all
Thy dewy fingers draw
The gradual dusky veil,"

caused Swinburne to say: "Corot on canvas might have signed his _Ode
to Evening_."

[Illustration: THOMAS GRAY.]

The high-water mark of the poetry of melancholy of this period was
reached in Thomas Gray's (1716-1771) _Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard_ (1751). The poet with great art selected those natural
phenomena which cast additional gloom upon the scene. We may notice in
the very first stanza that the images were chosen with this end in
view:--

"The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me"

Then we listen to the droning flight of the beetle, to the drowsy
tinklings from a distant fold, to the moping owl in an ivy-mantled
tower. Each natural object, either directly or by contrast, reflects
the mind of man. Nature serves as a background for the display of
emotion.

Gosse says in his _Life of Gray_: "The _Elegy_ has exercised an
influence on all the poetry of Europe, from Denmark to Italy, from
France to Russia. With the exception of certain works of Byron and
Shakespeare, no English poem has been so widely admired and imitated
abroad."

[Illustration: STOKE POGES CHURCHYARD (SCENE OF GRAY'S ELEGY).]

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