"Ode to Adversity"

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Go	Notes			Line	Text
	T	E	T/E		"Ode to Adversity"
					—— Ζῆνα . . .
					τὸν ϕρονεῖν βροτοὺς ὁδώ—
					σαντα, τῷ πάθει μαθάν
					Θέντα κυρίως ἔχειν.
					Aeschylus, in Agamemnone.
		E		1	Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
		E		2	Thou tamer of the human breast,
		E		3	Whose iron scourge and torturing hour,
		E		4	The bad affright, afflict the best!
		E		5	Bound in thy adamantine chain
		E		6	The proud are taught to taste of pain,
		E		7	And purple tyrants vainly groan
	T	E	T/E	8	With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.
				9	When first thy Sire to send on earth
		E		10	Virtue, his darling child, designed,
		E		11	To thee he gave the heavenly birth,
		E		12	And bade to form her infant mind.
				13	Stern rugged nurse! thy rigid lore
				14	With patience many a year she bore:
		E		15	What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know,
		E		16	And from her own she learned to melt at others' woe.
				17	Scared at thy frown terrific, fly
		E		18	Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood,
		E		19	Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,
		E		20	And leave us leisure to be good.
		E		21	Light they disperse, and with them go
		E		22	The summer friend, the flattering foe;
		E		23	By vain Prosperity received,
		E		24	To her they vow their truth and are again believed.
		E		25	Wisdom in sable garb arrayed,
		E		26	Immersed in rapturous thought profound,
	T	E	T/E	27	And Melancholy, silent maid
		E		28	With leaden eye, that loves the ground,
		E		29	Still on thy solemn steps attend:
		E		30	Warm Charity, the general friend,
		E		31	With Justice to herself severe,
	T	E	T/E	32	And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.
				33	Oh, gently on thy suppliant's head,
				34	Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand!
		E		35	Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,
	T	E	T/E	36	Nor circled with the vengeful band
		E		37	(As by the impious thou art seen)
		E		38	With thundering voice and threatening mien,
		E		39	With screaming Horror's funeral cry,
		E		40	Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.
		E		41	Thy form benign, oh Goddess, wear,
	T	E	T/E	42	Thy milder influence impart,
		E		43	Thy philosophic train be there
	T	E	T/E	44	To soften, not to wound my heart,
		E		45	The generous spark extinct revive,
		E		46	Teach me to love and to forgive,
		E		47	Exact my own defects to scan,
	T	E	T/E	48	What others are, to feel, and know myself a man.

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• [BrJ_1903] The Poetical Works of Thomas Gray: English and Latin. Edited with an introduction, life, notes and a bibliography by John Bradshaw. Reprinted edition. The Aldine edition of the British poets series. London: George Bell and sons, 1903 [1st edition 1891].
• [CrJ_1948] Gray: Poetry and Prose. With essays by Johnson, Goldsmith and others. With an Introduction and Notes by J. Crofts. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1948 [1st ed. 1926].
• [EpW_1959] Poems of Thomas Gray. Edited by W. C. Eppstein. London and Glasgow: Blackie & Son Ltd., 1959.
• [GoE_1884] The Works of Thomas Gray: In Prose and Verse. Ed. by Edmund Gosse, in four vols. London: MacMillan and Co., 1884, vol. i.
• [HeJ_1981] Thomas Gray: Selected Poems. Ed. by John Heath-Stubbs. Manchester: Carcanet New Press Ltd., 1981.
• [LoR_1969] The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins, Oliver Goldsmith. Edited by Roger Lonsdale. Longman Annotated English Poets Series. London and Harlow: Longmans, 1969.
• [P/W_1950] The Poems of Gray and Collins. Edited by Austin Lane Poole. Revised by Leonard Whibley. Third edition. Oxford editions of standard authors series. London: Oxford UP, 1937, reprinted 1950 [1st ed. 1919].
• [PhW_1894] Selections from the Poetry and Prose of Thomas Gray. Ed. with an introduction and notes by William Lyon Phelps. The Athenaeum press series. Boston: Ginn & company, 1894.
• [ReJ_1973] The Complete English Poems of Thomas Gray. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by James Reeves. The Poetry Bookshelf series. London: Heinemann; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1973.
• [S/H_1966] The Complete Poems of Thomas Gray: English, Latin and Greek. Edited by Herbert W. Starr and J. R. Hendrickson. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1966.
• [ToD_1922] Gray's English Poems, Original and Translated from the Norse and Welsh. Edited by Duncan C. Tovey. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1922 [1st ed. 1898].