"[Alcaic Ode]"

• Archive Work ID: poems.lt04
• Uniform Title: "[Alcaic Ode]" [e-text]
• First Line: O Tu, severi relligio loci,
• Language: Latin
• First Published: 1775
• References: Starr/Hendrickson (eds.), Complete Poems (1966), 151-152 (with English prose translation); Lonsdale (ed.), Poems (1969), 317-318 (with English prose translation)
• Summary: Gray wrote this poem in the album of the monastery of the Grande Chartreuse on this second visit on 21 August 1741, during his journey from Turin to Lyon, when he was returning alone from the Grand Tour. First published, as "Ode", in Mason's Memoirs (1775), 117-118. MS translation into English by Thomas Wharton.

1 Manuscript:

• • Archive MS ID: mss.0235 (Source: EAD/XML)
  • Title: "Ode composed at the Grande Chartreuse"
  • Date: 1780[?]
  • Physical Description: 4 pages, 180 mm x 110 mm; transcript in an unidentified neat and legible hand on Whatman paper
  • Language: Latin
  • Location: MS Add. 439, "Latin Pieces" section, 13-16, The Archives, York Minster Library & Archives, York, UK <https://yorkminster.org/treasures-and-collections.html>
  • Contents: Transcript in an unidentified neat and legible hand, entitled "Ode composed at the Grande Chartreuse" (p. 13) ("Ode III." [p. 15]). The poem is part of a section called "Latin Pieces", which is separately paginated and has its own table of contents (p. 24), in a volume entitled Gray's Poems. The book carries the bookplate of Gray's friend and biographer William Mason.