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The Attic warbler pours her throat,
Responsive to the cuckoo's note,

The untaught harmony of spring :
While, whisp'ring pleasure as they fly,
Cool Zephyrs thro' the clear blue sky
Their gather'd fragrance fling.

Where'er the oak's thick branches stretch
A broader browner shade,
Where'er the rude and moss-grown beech
O'er-canopies the glade,

Beside some water's rushy brink

With me the Muse shall sit, and think

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omnia." Also in the Pervigil. Vener. v. 13:
mis purpurantem pingit annum floribus." Pope has the
same expression in his Past. i. 28: "And lavish Nature
paints the purple year.”
"Gales that wake the purple year."
Mallet. Zephyr.

"Sic ubi multisona fervet

V. 5. Martial. Epig. i. 54: sacer Atthide lucus." Also in the Epitaphium Athenaidos apud Fabrettum, p. 702: "Cum te, nate, fleo, planctus dabit Attica Aedon." And " Attica volucris." Propert. II. xvi. 6.-Ovid. Halieut. v. 110: "Attica avis vernâ sub tempestate queratus.' Add Senecæ Herc. t. v. 200. Milton. Par. R. iv. 245: "The Attic bird trills her thickwarbled notes." The expression from Pope. Essay on Man, iii. 33:

66

And

pours her throat" is Is it for thee the linnet

pours her throat?" So Ovid. Trist. iii. 12. 8. “ Indocilique loquax gutture vernat avis.”

V.7.

V. 10.

-"The hollow Cuckoo sings

Thoms. Spring. Luke.

The symphony of Spring.".

-"Fresh gales and gentle airs

Whisper'd it to the woods." Par. L. viii. 515. v. Comus. v. 989. and P. L. iv. 327. "Cool zephyr."

Luke.

V. 12. Milton. Par. L. iv. 246: "The unpierc'd shade

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e lowing herds to murmuring brooks retreat, loser shades the panting flocks remove:' pastor umbras cum grege languido que fessus quærit." Hor. lib. III. Od. xxix. 21. Thomson. Autumn, 836: " Warn'd of approaching ather'd, play the swallow-people." And Walton. Angler, p. 260: "Now the wing'd people of the sing." Add Beaumont. Psyche, st. lxxxviii. p. ry tree empeopled was with birds of softest throats." r. Ep. p. 341. δήμον ὅλον ὄρνεων. and Max. Τyr. e's note, p. 82.

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V. 24. Thus Milton. Par. R. iv. 248: "The sound of bees' industrious murmur.' "" Wakefield quotes Thomson. Spr. 506 "Thro' the soft air the busy nations fly." And, 649: "But restless hurry thro' the busy air." Compare also Pope. T. of Fame, 294.

V. 25. "Some to the sun their insect-wings unfold." Pope. Rape of the Lock, ii. 59. W. This expression may have been suggested by a line in Green's Hermitage, quoted in Gray's Letter to Walpole: (see note at ver. 31.)

"From maggot-youth thro' change of state
They feel, like us, the turns of fate."

V. 26. See Milton, as quoted by Wakefield : Il Pen. 142,
Lycid. 140, Sams. Ag. 1066.

V. 27. "Nare per æstatem liquidam," Georg. iv. 59. Gray. To which, add Georg. i. 404; and En. v. 525; x.

272. 980.

"There I suck the liquid air." Milton. Comus, v.

V. 30. "Sporting with quick glance, shew to the sun their wav'd coats dropp'd with gold," Par. L. vii. 410. Gray.See also Pope. Hom. 11. ii. 557; and Essay on Man, iii. 55.

V. 31. While insects from the threshold preach," Green, in the Grotto. Dodsley. Misc. v. p. 161. Gray.—

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n a letter to H. Walpole, says: (see Walpole's vol. v. p. 395.) " I send you a bit of a thing for two first, because it is one of your favorites, Mr. M. and next, because I would do justice: the thought my second Ode turns, (The Ode to Spring, afteraced first, by Gray,) is manifestly stole from thence. I knew it at the time, but having seen this many fore; to be sure it imprinted itself on my memory, etting the author, I took it for my own." Then the quotation from Green's Grotto. Wakefield have discovered the original of this stanza in some Thomson. Summer, 342.

"The varied colours run," Thoms. Spring. Luke.

1 branch to branch the smaller birds with song 'd the woods, and spread their painted wings.' vii. 438. W. And so Thomson. Spring, 582; eorg. iii. 243; En. iv. 525; Claudian, xv. 3. ue plumis." Phædri Fab. iii. v. 18.

Πάνθ ̓ ἅλιον ἄμμι δεδύκειν. Theocrit. Idyll. V. Alexis ap. Stobæum. lib. cxv.: "Hon yàp o ὺς Εσπέραν ἄγει. Plato has the same metapho

II.*

ON THE DEATH OF A FAVOURITE CAT,

DROWNED IN A TUB OF GOLD FISHES.

[On a favourite cat called Selima, that fell into a China Tub with gold fishes in it, and was drowned, MS. Wharton. Walpole, after the death of Gray, placed the China Vase on a pedestal at Strawberry Hill, with a few lines of the Ode for its inscription.]

'Twas on a lofty vase's side,

Where China's gayest art had dy'd
The azure flowers, that blow;

Demurest of the tabby kind,

Var. V. 4. In the first edition the order of these lines was reversed:

"The pensive Selima reclin'd,
Demurest of the tabby kind."

rical expression : ἡμεῖς δ ̓ ἐν δυσμαῖς τοῦ βίου, de Legib. tom. ii. p. 770, ed. Serrani; and Aristotelis Poetica, cap. 35: καὶ τὸ γῆρας Εσπέραν βίου. Add Catull. ad Lesb. c. 5. v. 5. "Nobis, cum semel occidet brevis lux." Twining, in his translation of the Poetics, together with this line from Gray, has quoted Com. of Err. (last scene) : " Yet hath my night of life some memory," see p. 108. It is a phrase very common among the old English poets.-Herrick has,

"Sunk is my sight, set is my sun, And all the loom of life undone." and "My sun begins to set," Rowley's All's lost by Lust, p. 63, 4to. with many others.

* This Ode first appeared in Dodsley. Col. vol. ii. p. 274, with some variations; only one of which is given by Mason. They are all noticed in this edition, as they

occur.

V. 3. This expression has been accused of redundance

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