Thy form benign, O goddess, wear, Thy milder influence impart; Thy philosophic train be there To soften, not to wound, my heart. The generous spark extinct revive, 45 Teach me to love and to forgive, Exact my own defects to scan, What others are to feel, and know myself a Man. [Illustration: BERKELEY CASTLE. "Mark the year, and mark the night, When Severn shall reëcho with affright The shrieks of death thro' Berkeley's roofs that ring, Shrieks of an agonizing king!" _The Bard_, 53.] NOTES. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. A. S., Anglo-Saxon. Arc., Milton's _Arcades_. C. T., Chaucer's _Canterbury Tales_. Cf. (_confer_), compare. D. V., Goldsmith's _Deserted Village_. Ep., Epistle, Epode. Foll., following. F. Q., Spenser's _Faërie Queene_. H., Haven's _Rhetoric_ (Harper's edition). Hales, _Longer English Poems_, edited by Rev. J. W. Hales (London, 1872). Il Pens., Milton's _Il Penseroso_. L'All., Milton's _L'Allegro_. Ol., Pindar's _Olympian Odes_. P. L., Milton's _Paradise Lost_. P. R., Milton's _Paradise Regained_. S. A., Milton's _Samson Agonistes_. Shakes. Gr., Abbott's _Shakespearian Grammar_ (the references are to _sections_, not pages). Shep. Kal., Spenser's _Shepherd's Kalendar_. st., stanza. Wb., Webster's Dictionary (last revised quarto edition). Worc., Worcester's Dictionary (quarto edition). Other abbreviations (names of books in the Bible, plays of Shakespeare, works of Ovid, Virgil, and Horace, etc.) need no explanation. NOTES. [Illustration] ELEGY IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD. This poem was begun in the year 1742, but was not finished until 1750, when Gray sent it to Walpole with a letter (dated June 12, 1750) in which he says: "I have been here at Stoke a few days (where I shall continue good part of the summer), and having put an end to a thing, whose beginning you have seen long ago, I immediately send it you. You will, I hope, look upon it in the light of a thing with an end to it: a merit that most of my writings have wanted, and are like to want." It was shown in manuscript to some of the author's friends, and was published in 1751 only because it was about to be printed surreptitiously.