"This ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales that Edward the
First, when he completed the conquest of that country, ordered all
the bards that fell into his hands to be put to death" (Gray).
The original argument of the ode, as Gray had set it down in his
commonplace-book, was as follows: "The army of Edward I., as they
march through a deep valley, and approach Mount Snowdon, are suddenly
stopped by the appearance of a venerable figure seated on the summit
of an inaccessible rock, who, with a voice more than human,
reproaches the king with all the desolation and misery which he had
brought on his country; foretells the misfortunes of the Norman race,
and with prophetic spirit declares that all his cruelty shall never
extinguish the noble ardour of poetic genius in this island; and that
men shall never be wanting to celebrate true virtue and valour in
immortal strains, to expose vice and infamous pleasure, and boldly
censure tyranny and oppression. His song ended, he precipitates
himself from the mountain, and is swallowed up by the river that
rolls at its feet."
Mitford, in his "Essay on the Poetry of Gray," says of this Ode: "The
tendency of _The Bard_ is to show the retributive justice that
follows an act of tyranny and wickedness; to denounce on Edward, in
his person and his progeny, the effect of the crime he had committed
in the massacre of the bards; to convince him that neither his power
nor situation could save him from the natural and necessary
consequences of his guilt; that not even the virtues which he
possessed could atone for the vices with which they were accompanied:
'Helm nor hauberk's twisted mail,
Nor e'en thy _virtues_, tyrant, shall avail.'
This is the real tendency of the poem; and well worthy it was of
being adorned and heightened by such a profusion of splendid images
and beautiful machinery. We must also observe how much this moral
feeling increases as we approach the close; how the poem rises in
dignity; and by what a fine gradation the solemnity of the subject
ascends. The Bard commenced his song with feelings of sorrow for his
departed brethren and his desolate country. This despondence,
however, has given way to emotions of a nobler and more exalted
nature. What can be more magnificent than the vision which opens
before him to display the triumph of justice and the final glory of
his cause? And it may be added, what can be more forcible or emphatic
than the language in which it is conveyed?
'But oh! what solemn scenes on Snowdon's height,
Descending slow their glittering skirts unroll?
Visions of glory, spare my aching sight!
_Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul!_'
The fine apostrophe to the shade of Taliessin completes the picture
of exultation:
'Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear;
They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.'
The triumph of justice, therefore, is now complete. The vanquished
has risen superior to his conqueror, and the reader closes the poem
with feelings of content and satisfaction. He has seen the Bard
uplifted both by a divine energy and by the natural superiority of
virtue; and the conqueror has shrunk into a creature of hatred and
abhorrence:
'Be thine despair, and sceptred care;
To triumph, and to die, are mine.'"
With regard to the _obscurity_ of the poem, the same writer remarks
that "it is such only as of necessity arises from the plan and
conduct of a prophecy." "In the prophetic poem," he adds, "one point
of history alone is told, and the rest is to be acquired previously
by the reader; as in the contemplation of an historical picture,
which commands only one moment of time, our memory must supply us
with the necessary links of knowledge; and that point of time
selected by the painter must be illustrated by the spectator's
knowledge of the past or future, of the cause or the consequences."
He refers, for corroboration of this opinion, to Dr. Campbell, who in
his "Philosophy of Rhetoric," says: "I know no style to which
darkness of a certain sort is more suited than to the prophetical:
many reasons might be assigned which render it improper that prophecy
should be perfectly understood before it be accomplished. Besides, we
are certain that a prediction may be very dark before the
accomplishment, and yet so plain afterwards as scarcely to admit a
doubt in regard to the events suggested. It does not belong to
critics to give laws to prophets, nor does it fall within the
confines of any human art to lay down rules for a species of
composition so far above art. Thus far, however, we may warrantably
observe, that when the prophetic style is imitated in poetry, the
piece ought, as much as possible, to possess the character above
mentioned. This character, in my opinion, is possessed in a very
eminent degree by Mr. Gray's ode called _The Bard_. It is all
darkness to one who knows nothing of the English history posterior to
the reign of Edward the First, and all light to one who is acquainted
with that history. But this is a kind of writing whose peculiarities
can scarcely be considered as exceptions from ordinary rules."
Farther on in the same essay, Mitford remarks: "The skill of Gray is,
I think, eminently shown in the superior distinctness with which he
has marked those parts of his prophecies which are speedily to be
accomplished; and in the gradations by which, as he descends, he has
insensibly melted the more remote into the deeper and deeper
shadowings of general language. The first prophecy is the fate of
Edward the Second. In that the Bard has pointed out the very night in
which he is to be destroyed; has named the river that flowed around
his prison, and the castle that was the scene of his sufferings:
'Mark the _year_, and mark the _night_,
When _Severn_ shall re-echo with affright
The shrieks of death thro' Berkeley's roofs that ring,
Shrieks of an agonizing king.'
How different is the imagery when Richard the Second is described;
and how indistinctly is the luxurious monarch marked out in the form
of the morning, and his country in the figure of the vessel!
'The swarm that in thy noontide beam were born?
Gone to salute the rising morn.
Fair laughs the morn,' etc.
The last prophecy is that of the civil wars, and of the death of the
two young princes. No place, no name is now noted: and all is seen
through the dimness of figurative expression:
'Above, below, the rose of snow,
Twin'd with her blushing foe, we spread:
The bristled boar in infant gore
Wallows beneath the thorny shade.'"
Hales remarks: "It is perhaps scarcely now necessary to say that the
tradition on which _The Bard_ is founded is wholly groundless. Edward
I. never did massacre Welsh bards. Their name is legion in the
beginning of the 14th century. Miss Williams, the latest historian of
Wales, does not even mention the old story."[1]
[Footnote 1: The _Saturday Review_, for June 19, 1875, in the article
from which we have elsewhere quoted (p. 79, foot-note), refers to
this point as follows:
"Gray was one of the first writers to show that earlier parts of
English history were not only worth attending to, but were capable of
poetic treatment. We can almost forgive him for dressing up in his
splendid verse a foul and baseless calumny against Edward the First,
when we remember that to most of Gray's contemporaries Edward the
First must have seemed a person almost mythical, a benighted Popish
savage, of whom there was very little to know, and that little hardly
worth knowing. Our feeling towards Gray in this matter is much the
same as our feeling towards Mitford in the matter of Greek history.
We are angry with Mitford for misrepresenting Demosthenes and a crowd
of other Athenian worthies, but we do not forget that he was the
first to deal with Demosthenes and his fellows, neither as mere names
nor as demi-gods, but as real living men like ourselves. It was a
pity to misrepresent Demosthenes, but even the misrepresentation was
something; it showed that Demosthenes could be made the subject of
human feeling one way or another. It is unpleasant to hear the King
whose praise it was that
'Velox est ad veniam, ad vindictam tardus,'
spoken of as 'ruthless,' and the rest of it. But Gray at least felt
that Edward was a real man, while to most of his contemporaries he
could have been little more than 'the figure of an old Gothic king,'
such as Sir Roger de Coverley looked when he sat in Edward's own
chair."]