"Ode for Music"

• Archive Work ID: poems.ocmu
• Uniform Title: "Ode for Music" [e-text]
• First Line: "Hence, avaunt, ('tis holy ground)
• Language: English
• First Published: 1769
• References: Starr/Hendrickson (eds.), Complete Poems (1966), 48-51; Lonsdale (ed.), Poems (1969), 264-274
• Summary: Written at Cambridge between 6 February and 20 April 1769 for the installation of the Duke of Grafton as Chancellor of the University, 1 July 1769. First published, anonymously, as Ode performed in the Senate-House at Cambridge... (1769), a copy of the first edition with an autograph note is at the Henry W. And Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, New York, NY, USA.

1 Manuscript:

• • Archive MS ID: mss.0222 (Source: EAD/XML)
  • Title: "An Irregular Ode for Music"
  • Date: 1780[?]
  • Physical Description: 11 pages, 180 mm x 110 mm; transcript in an unidentified neat and legible hand on Whatman paper
  • Language: English
  • Location: MS Add. 439, "Poems" section, 63-73, 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 "An Irregular Ode for Music" (p. 63) ("Ode. VII" [p. 65]). The poem, which has numbered stanzas (I.-VIII.) and several annotations to the half-title page, based on information on the title page of the 1769 edition, and to ll. 39, 41, 42, 43, 45, 66, 70, and 84, is part of a section called "Poems", which is separately paginated and has its own table of contents (p. 129), in a volume entitled Gray's Poems. The book carries the bookplate of Gray's friend and biographer William Mason.