Now air is hushed, save where the weak-eyed bat,
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing,

As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum:

Now teach me, maid composed,

To breathe some softened strain,

Whose numbers stealing through thy dark'ning vale,

May not unseemly with its stillness suit;

As, musing slow, I hail

Thy genial loved return!

For when thy folding-star arising shows
His paly circlet, at his warning lamp

The fragrant hours, and elves

Who slept in buds the day,

And many a nymph who wreathes her brows with sedge, And sheds the fresh'ning dew, and, lovelier still

The pensive pleasures sweet,

Prepare thy shadowy car;

Then let me rove some wild and heathy scene;

Or find some ruin, 'midst its dreary dells,

Whose walls more awful nod

By thy religious gleams.

Or if chill blustering winds, or driving rain,
Prevent my willing feet, be mine the hut

That from the mountain's side

Views wild 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.

While spring shall pour his showers, as oft he wont.

And bathe thy breathing tresses, meekest Eve!

While summer loves to sport

Beneath thy lingering light;

While sallow autumn fills thy lap with leaves;
Or winter, yelling through the troublous air,
Affrights thy shrinking train,

And rudely rends thy robes;

So long regardful of thy quiet rule,

Shall fancy, friendship, science, smiling peace,

Thy gentlest influence own,

And love thy favourite name.

ΑΝ ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY

CHURCHYARD.

BY THOMAS GRAY.

[THOMAS GRAY, the son of a scrivener, was born in London in 1716; he was educated at Eton, and afterwards at Cambridge, where his life was chiefly spent in his favourite studies. In 1739 he was induced by his friend Horace Walpole to join him in a Continental tour; they had some slight quarrel, and Gray returned, in the year 1741. He planned many literary schemes, but lacked the energy to bring them to completion. In 1747 he published his "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College," and in 1751 his well-known "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard." In 1761, he received from the Duke of Grafton the Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge, with a salary of 400/. He died on the 30th of July, 1771, and was buried at Stoke Pogis, in the neighbourhood of Windsor.]

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

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r,

The moping owl does to the moon complain Of such as, wandering near her secret bow'r, Molest her ancient solitary reign.