Literary by-paths in old England . pths of human feeling ; and the samewriter asserts that as an elegiac poet, Grayholds for all ages to come his unassailable andsovereign station. When the eye of sense falls for the first timeupon a scene hitherto beheld only by the eye ofimagination, there often comes a painful feelingof disenchantment, an enevitable dispelling ofmuch of the romance which gathered round thespot while it was still unseen. For the greatmajority, the churchyard in which Gray wrote his Elegy has its abode in the realm of fancy —how does it suffer by the critical test of comingwi
Literary by-paths in old England . pths of human feeling ; and the samewriter asserts that as an elegiac poet, Grayholds for all ages to come his unassailable andsovereign station. When the eye of sense falls for the first timeupon a scene hitherto beheld only by the eye ofimagination, there often comes a painful feelingof disenchantment, an enevitable dispelling ofmuch of the romance which gathered round thespot while it was still unseen. For the greatmajority, the churchyard in which Gray wrote his Elegy has its abode in the realm of fancy —how does it suffer by the critical test of comingwithin range of the seeing eye ? Frankly, let itbe confessed that it suffers surprisingly little. Itis true that the painful uniformity and glaringwhiteness of the modern marble memorial stoneswhich are becoming too plentiful jar upon theold-time sentiment with which the pilgrim ap-proaches this shrine, but these unlovely emblemsof departed worth and surviving grief are happilyremoved a little distance from the church, and thus102. Stoke Poge: IN OLD ENGLAND it happens that the older tombs preserve aroundthe immediate vicinity of the building a scenewhich harmonises with the verse of Gray becauseit can have changed but little since his time. Itis just such a scene as most imaginations wouldhave pictured. Each object is easily recognisedby the poets description, and yet no one objectis so sharp in Out-line as to remove italtogether from thesphere of imagina-tion. The onlyprobable exceptionis the ivy-mantledtower. The toweritself is in perfectharmony with the Elegy, and its thickly clustered ivy still providesa secret bower for the descendants of the poetsmoping owl; but the wooden spire which risesfrom its battlements seems to strike a note of dis-cord. For the rest, all is as it should be. Eachpicture in the poem has its faithful counterpart;the eyewitnesses to the fidelity with which thepoet has caught the inner likeness of the mute ob-jects which sat for the models of his imm
Size: 1443px × 1731px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookauthorshelleyh, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookyear1906
