Ode on a Distant Proscpect of Eton College (1742)

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1742)

Ye distant spires, ye antique towers,That crown the watery glade,Where grateful Science still adoresHer Henry’s holy shade;And ye, that from the stately browOf Windsor’s heights the expanse belowOf grove, of lawn, of mead survey,Whose turf, whose shade, whose flowers amongWanders the hoary Thames alongHis silver-winding way.

Ah, happy hills, ah, pleasing shade,Ah, fields beloved in vain,Where once my careless childhood strayed,A stranger yet to pain!I feel the gales, that from ye blow,A momentary bliss bestow,As waving fresh their gladsome wing,My weary soul they seem to soothe,And, redolent of joy and youth,To breathe a second spring.

Say, Father Thames, for thou hast seenFull many a sprightly raceDisporting on thy margent greenThe paths of pleasure trace,Who foremost now delight to cleaveWith pliant arm thy glassy wave?The captive linnet which enthrall?What idle progeny succeedTo chase the rolling circle’s speed,Or urge the flying ball?

While some on earnest business bentTheir murmuring labours ply‘Gainst graver hours, that bring constraintTo sweeten liberty:Some bold adventurers disdainThe limits of their little reign,And unknown regions dare descry:Still as they run they look behind,They hear a voice in every wind,And snatch a fearful joy.

Gay hope is theirs by fancy fed,Less pleasing when possessed;The tear forgot as soon as shed,The sunshine of the breast:Theirs buxom health of rosy hue,Wild wit, invention ever new,And lively cheer of vigour born;The thoughtless day, the easy night,The spirits pure, the slumbers light,That fly the approach of morn.

Alas, regardless of their doom,The little victims play!No sense have they of ills to come,Nor care beyond today:Yet see how all around ‘em waitThe ministers of human fate,And black Misfortune’s baleful train!Ah, show them where in ambush standTo seize their prey the murderous band!Ah, tell them they are men!

These shall the fury Passions tear,The vultures of the mindDisdainful Anger, pallid Fear,And Shame that skulks behind;Or pining Love shall waste their youth,Or Jealousy with rankling tooth,That inly gnaws the secret heart,And Envy wan, and faded Care,Grim-visaged comfortless Despair,And Sorrow’s piercing dart.

Ambition this shall tempt to rise,Then whirl the wretch from high,To bitter Scorn a sacrifice,And grinning Infamy.The stings of Falsehood those shall try,And hard Unkindness’ altered eye,That mocks the tear if forced to flow;And keen Remorse with blood defiled,And moody Madness laughing wildAmid severest woe.

Lo, in the vale of years beneathA grisly troop are seen,The painful family of Death,More hideous than their queen:This racks the joints, this fires the veins,That every labouring sinew strains,Those in the deeper vitals rage:Lo, Poverty, to fill the band,That numbs the soul with icy hand,And slow-consuming Age.

To each his sufferings: all are men,Condemned alike to groan,The tender for another’s pain;The unfeeling for his own.Yet ah! why should they know their fate?Since sorrow never comes too late,And happiness too swiftly flies.Thought would destroy their paradise.No more; where ignorance is bliss,‘Tis folly to be wisep.

Notes

Title. An ode is “a lyric poem in rhymed stanzas, generally in the form of an address and exalted in feeling and expression”. In Ancient Greece, Pindar’s odes, composed to praise the Olympic victors, were characterised by their formal complexity, paralleled by accompanying music and dance. Odes were introduced into English poetry and adapted to its versification patterns in the 17th century. (The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English, ed. Ian Ousby, Cambridge: CUP, 1993, p. 693).

Eton College is an English public school —i.e. privately financed—  exclusively for boys between the ages of 13 to 18. Eton was founded in 1440 and it is located in the vicinity of Windsor Castle— it is precisely from “Windsor’s heights” (l. 6) that the poet has gained the “prospect” described. The school is distinguished by its elitism, educational excellence and sense of community. Famous “Etonians” include renowned statesmen, scientists and artists. Thomas Gray entered Eton at the age of 8.

Illustration of Eton College

Citation. The translation of this Greek line, closely related to the poem’s content, is “I am a man: sufficient reason for being miserable” (The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. 1, 2863, 1n). Menander (c. 342 – c. 292) was a prolific Athenian dramatist and the greatest exponent of the “New Comedy”, which represented an evolution towards a higher degree of realism, combined with a satirical component.

Versification. In English verse, odes are typically written in ten-line stanzas. Here, most lines have six or eight syllables (iambic trimeters or tetrameters) and the rhyme pattern is ababccdeed.

l. 1, l. 5. Ye, And ye. The Early Modern English pronoun ye (2nd pers. pl.) ceased to be used in the 16th century, so it was already an archaic form when Gray composed his poem. In the first stanza, the poet addresses both the college buildings and the viewers —who could be the readers— standing on top of a slope, within the grounds of Windsor Castle.

l. 3. Science, which here means knowledge in general (cf. l. 120 of “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”), is personified as being eternally in attendance to the sovereign who founded Eton College.

l. 4. Henry. Henry VI, the founder of the college. Henry VI not only founded Eton in 1440, but also —one year later— King’s College, in Cambridge. Originally, King’s College was meant to provide further education exclusively for Etonians http://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/about/history.html Henry VI was an insecure and mentally unstable king —which precipitated the Wars of the Roses—, but he was also a patron of education and architecture: two of the finest examples of English Late Gothic are precisely Eton College Chapel and King’s College Chapel.

l. 6. Windsor’s heights. Windsor Castle was built for William the Conqueror by the end of the 11th century and began to be used as a Royal Residence shortly after.

l. 13. My careless childhood. After the use of the second person plural, through which the poet has conveyed his emotional attachment to the scene, he turns to the first person singular, a marker of poetic sincerity. His recognition of the poetic value in personal memories is one of the basic reasons for labelling Gray Pre-Romantic: decades later, William Wordsworth (1770-1850) will define poetry as the expression of “emotion recollected in tranquility”.

l. 20. A second spring. In medieval and Renaissance poetry, the spring was the conventional setting for love and joy. The poet’s happiness is only remembered and therefore ephimeral. His recollections are a “second spring” that brings him back to his childhood, a virginal state of pure bliss, when he was “a stranger yet to pain” (l. 14).

l. 21. Father Thames. The river is personified as an aged and fatherly figure (cf. the use of the adjective “hoary” in l. 9), a natural witness to the evolutions of British history and —closely linked with them— to the academic and social education of successive generations of Etonians. The poet’s address to the Thames is reminiscent of Edmund Spenser’s Prothalamion (1595): “Sweete Themmes runne softly, till I end my Song.” Spenser’s poem was composed as a celebration of the betrothal of the daughters of the Earl of Worcester, Katherine and Elizabeth.

l. 33. ‘Gainst. Here “against” introduces a time adjunct “with some idea of preparation”, and is synonymous with “in view of; in anticipation of, in preparation for, in time for” (OED 1989 ed.: I, 242).

l. 37. Descry. To see, discern, catch sight of.

l. 40. Fearful joy. The oxymoron encapsulates the complementary opposition —underlying the whole stanza— between the constraints of school discipline and the sense of freedom inherent to recreational activities.

ll. 41-42. Gay hope […] when possessed. A state of hopeful suspense, sustained by the imagination, is preferable to the actual unfolding of events.

l. 56. The ministers of human fate. These lurking figures objectify the future suffering that threatens a carefree childhood and adolescence. The “murderous band” (l. 59) includes a number of personified feelings that appear, capitalized, in the stanzas that follow. Each one of these will select different boys as their prey.

**l. 60. Ah, tell them they are men!**¾and they are therefore doomed, condemned to suffer. This line harks back to the initial citation (see note above, and also ll. 90-91).

l. 61. The fury Passions. Gray’s phrase may contain an allusion to the Roman Furies (the Erinyes in Greek mythology), cruel and vindictive deities, merciless but fair. Greek and Roman poets represented them tormenting sinners on earth and punishing them in Hell http://www.pantheon.org/articles/f/furies.html

l. 81. Vale of years. The phrase echoes “vale” or “valley of tears”, used in Christian writing, communicates a vision of mortal life as continual suffering opposed to eternal bliss.

l. 83. The painful family of Death. The poem reaches its dramatic climax with the introduction of these characters who relentlessly and violently destroy the human body or cause its decay before death.

l. 98. Their paradise. Childhood, remembered after it is gone, is seen as “paradise lost”. After the pain and disappointments of adult life have been experienced, it seems impossible to regain the happiness of this period, which memory keeps idyllic.

ll. 99-100. Were ignorance […] to be wise. The final sentence, which takes the form of a logical inference, equates ignorance with joy and knowledge or consciousness with immediate suffering. This conclusion is somewhat paradoxical, considering that the setting of the poem is Eton, the seat of “grateful Science” (l. 2).