Sixty-sixth--"Their struggling virtues" was improved to "Their growing
virtues."
Seventy-first--"Crown the shrine" was altered to "heap the shrine,"
and in the next line "Incense hallowed by the muse's flame" was wisely
changed to "Incense kindled by the muse's flame."
After the seventy-second line stand, in the Fraser manuscript, the
following stanzas, which Gray, with admirable taste, afterward omitted.
But, before he decided to leave them out altogether, he drew a black
line down the margin, indicating that he would transfer them to another
place. These stanzas were originally intended to close the poem.
Afterward the thought occurred to him of "the hoary-headed swain" and
the "Epitaph."
"The thoughtless World to Majesty may bow,
Exalt the Brave and idolize Success,
But more to Innocence their safety owe
Than Power and Genius e'er conspire to bless.
"And thou, who, mindful of the unhonored Dead,
Dost, in these Notes, their artless Tale relate,
By Night and lonely Contemplation led
To linger in the gloomy Walks of Fate;
"Hark, how the sacred Calm that broods around
Bids every fierce, tumultuous Passion cease,
In still, small Accents whispering from the Ground
A grateful Earnest of eternal Peace.
"No more with Reason and thyself at Strife,
Give anxious Cares and useless Wishes room;
But through the cool, sequestered Vale of Life
Pursue the silent Tenor of thy Doom."
After these stanzas, according to the Fraser manuscript, were to follow
these lines, which I do not remember to have seen elsewhere:--
"If chance that e'er some pensive Spirit more,
By sympathetic Musings here delayed,
With vain though kind Enquiry shall explore
Thy once-loved Haunt, thy long-neglected Shade,
"Haply," etc.
But Gray soon dispensed with this feeble stanza, and made a new one by
changing it into the one beginning:--
"For thee, who mindful."
The ninety-ninth and one hundredth lines stand in the Fraser
manuscript--
"With hasty footsteps brush the dews away
On the high brow of yonder hanging lawn."
The following stanza is noticeable for the inversions so frequent
in Gray, and which he had, perhaps, unconsciously adopted from his
familiarity with the classics. He afterward omitted it:--
"Him have we seen the greenwood side along,
While o'er the heath we hied, our labors done.
Oft as the wood-lark piped her farewell song,
With wistful eyes pursue the setting sun."
In the manuscript the word is spelled "whistful." In line 101, "hoary
beech" is corrected to "spreading beech," and afterward to "nodding
beech."
Line 113--"Dirges meet" was changed to "dirges dire;" and after 116
came the beautiful stanza, afterward omitted by Gray as being _de trop_
in this place:--
"There, scattered oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen, are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground."
Even in this verse there were two corrections. "Robin" was altered in
the Fraser manuscript into "redbreast," and "frequent violets" into
"showers of violets."
One of the most curious accidents to which this famous poem has been
subjected was an erroneous change made in the early editions, which has
been propagated almost to our time. In the stanza beginning--
"The boast of Heraldry, the pomp of Power,"