That teach the rustic moralist to die.[366-29]

For who, to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing, anxious being e'er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind?[367-30]

On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee,[367-31] who, mindful of th' unhonored dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely Contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn,
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.

"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech,
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Mutt'ring his wayward fancies, he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful-wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or crossed in hopeless love.

"One morn I missed him from the customed hill,
Along the heath, and near his fav'rite tree.
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he.

"The next, with dirges due,[368-32] in sad array,
Slow through the church way path we saw him borne.--
Approach and read, for thou canst read, the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."[368-33]

THE EPITAPH

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth,
A youth, to Fortune and to Fame unknown:
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere;
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery, all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wished) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose,)
The bosom of his Father and his God.

[Illustration: THE COUNTRY CHURCHYARD]

Thomas Gray was born in London on the twenty-sixth of December,
1716, and received his education at Cambridge, where he lived most