Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.
This line is so obscure that it is difficult to apply it to what
precedes it. Mason in his edition in vain attempts to derive it from a
thought of Petrarch, and still more vainly attempts to amend it;
Wakefield expends an octavo page to paraphrase this single verse. From
the following lines of Chaucer, one would imagine Gray caught the
recollected idea. The old Reve, in his prologue, says of himself, and of
old men,
For whan we may not don than wol we speken;
Yet in our ASHEN cold is FIRE yreken.
TYRWHIT'S _Chaucer_, vol. i. p. 153, v. 3879.
Gray has a very expressive _word_, highly poetical, but I think not
common: