"Now air is hush'd, save where the weak-eyed bat
With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing,
Or where the beetle winds
His small but sullen horn,
As oft he rises 'midst the twilight path,
Against the pilgrim borne in heedless hum."
and _Macbeth_, iii. 2:
"Ere the bat hath flown
His cloister'd flight; ere to black Hecate's summons
The shard-borne beetle, with his drowsy hums,
Hath rung night's yawning peal," etc.
10. _The moping owl_. Mitford quotes Ovid, _Met._ v. 550: "Ignavus
bubo, dirum mortalibus omen;" Thomson, _Winter_, 114:
"Assiduous in his bower the wailing owl
Plies his sad song;"
and Mallet, _Excursion_:
"the wailing owl
Screams solitary to the mournful moon."
12. _Her ancient solitary reign_. Cf. Virgil, _Geo._ iii. 476:
"desertaque regna pastorum." A MS. variation of this line mentioned
by Mitford is, "Molest and pry into her ancient reign."
13. "As he stands in the churchyard, he thinks only of the poorer
people, because the better-to-do lay interred inside the church.
Tennyson (_In Mem._ x.) speaks of resting
'beneath the clover sod
That takes the sunshine and the rains,
Or where the kneeling hamlet drains
The chalice of the grapes of God.'
In Gray's time, and long before, and some time after it, the former
resting-place was for the poor, the latter for the rich. It was so in
the first instance, for two reasons: (i.) the interior of the church
was regarded as of great sanctity, and all who could sought a place
in it, the most dearly coveted spot being near the high altar; (ii.)
when elaborate tombs were the fashion, they were built inside the
church for the sake of security, 'gay tombs' being liable to be
'robb'd' (see the funeral dirge in Webster's _White Devil_). As these
two considerations gradually ceased to have power, and other
considerations of an opposite tendency began to prevail, the inside
of the church became comparatively deserted, except when ancestral
reasons gave no choice" (Hales).
17. Cf. Milton, _Arcades_, 56: "the odorous breath of morn;" _P. L._
ix. 192:
"Now when as sacred light began to dawn
In Eden on the humid flowers that breath'd
Their morning incense," etc.
18. Hesiod ([Greek: Erg.] 568) calls the swallow [Greek: orthogoê
chelidôn.] Cf. Virgil, _Æn._ viii. 455:
"Evandrum ex humili tecto lux suscitat alma,
Et matutini volucrum sub culmine cantus."