Notes
1] The Greek odes of Pindar (d. 442 B.C.) were symmetrical chanted poems characterized by a varied and elaborate versification regularly and exactly repeated. Here the three stanzas of the first group (called strophe, antistrophe, and epode, or in English, turn, counter-turn, and stand, from the positions of the chorus) exactly correspond in structure to the parallel stanzas in the second and third groups, strophe to strophe, antistrophe to antistrophe, etc. To the 1768 edition of these poems Gray supplied notes and an ironical advertisement stating: "When the author first published this and the following Ode [The Bard], he was advised, even by his friends, to subjoin some few explanatory notes; but had too much respect for the understanding of his readers to take that liberty." The notes quoted below are from this edition.
In a note Gray refers to Psalms (57: 9, Prayer Book version): "Awake, my glory: awake, lute and harp." "Pindar styles his own poetry, with its musical accompaniments, ... Aeolian song, Aeolian strings, the breath of the Aeolian lute" (Gray). Aeolia was a district of Asia Minor, with which Greek lyric poetry was specially connected.
3] Helicon's springs. Helicon was a mountain in Boeotia which had two fountains Aganippe and Hippocrene, sacred to the Muses.
3 ff.: "The subject and simile, as usual with Pindar, are united. The various sources of poetry, which gives life and lustre to all it touches, are here described; its quiet majestic progress enriching every subject (otherwise dry and barren) with a pomp of diction and luxuriant harmony of numbers; and its more rapid and irresistible course, when swollen and hurried away by the conflict of tumultuous passions." (Gray)
9] Ceres: the goddess who presided over grain and tillage.
12] Cf. Pope, Iliad, XVII, 315: "Rocks rebellow to the roar."
13] "Power of harmony to calm the turbulent sallies of the soul. The thoughts are borrowed from the first Pythian of Pindar." (Gray)
15] shell. The lyre was supposed to have been originally made from a tortoise-shell.
17] Thrace was a special haunt of Mars.
20] "This is a weak imitation of some incomparable lines in the same ode [i.e., the first Pythian of Pindar]" (Gray).
21] the feather'd king: the eagle, the bird of Jove.
25 ff.] "Power of harmony to produce all the graces of motion in the body" (Gray).
27] Idalia: in Cyprus, sacred to Venus.
29] Cytherea: Venus.
42 ff.] "To compensate the real and imaginary ills of life, the Muse was given to mankind by the same Providence that sends the Day by its cheerful presence to dispel the glooms and terrors of the Night" (Gray).
52] "Or seen the morning's well-appointed star/Come marching up the eastern hills afar (Cowley)" (Gray). Gray misquotes Cowley, Brutus, an Ode (55-7): "One would have thought 't had heard the morning crow,/Or seen her well-appointed star/Come marching up the eastern hill afar."
53] Hyperion: here identified with Apollo, god of the sun.
54] Gray cites as reference Virgil, Aeneid, VI, [796], and Petrarch, Canzone 2 [''O aspettata in Ciel ... ," 48].
54-65.: "Extensive influence of poetic genius over the remotest and most uncivilized nations; its connection with liberty, and the virtues that naturally attend on it" (Gray).
62] Cf. Paradise Lost, IX, 1116-17: "girt/With feather'd cuncture."
64] pursue. The use of the plural verb after the first noun of a compound subject is common in Pindar.
66 ff.] "Progress of Poetry from Greece to Italy, and from Italy to England. Chaucer was not unacquainted with the writings of Dante or of Petrarch. The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt had travelled in Italy and formed their taste there; Spenser imitated the Italian writers; Milton improved on them; but this school expired soon after the Restoration, and a new era arose on the French model, which has subsisted ever since" (Gray).
Delphi: on the side of Mt. Parnassus, the chief shrine of Apollo.
68] Ilissus: a river near Athens.
69] Maeander: a river of Asia Minor where Homer is supposed to have been born, and where lyric poetry flourished.
77] the sad Nine: the Muses.
78] Latian plains: the plains of Latium, i.e., Italy.
82] Albion: England.
84] Nature's darling: Shakespeare.
86] the mighty Mother: Nature.
89] pencil: in its original meaning of a small paint brush.
95] Nor second he: Milton (Gray).
98] "'Flammantia moenia mundi'. Lucretius, i, [731]" (Gray).
99] "'For the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels, and above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone--this was the appearance of the glory of the Lord.' Ezekiel, i, 20, 26, 28" (Gray).
102] The reference is to Milton's blindness.
105-06] "Meant to express the stately march and sounding energy of Dryden's rhymes" (Gray). Cf. Pope, Epistle to Augustus, 267-69.
106] "'Hast thou clothed his neck with thunder?' Job [XXXIX, 19]" (Gray).
110] "Words that weep, and tears that speak. Cowley" (Gray). Gray quotes Cowley, "The Prophet" in The Mistress 20.
111] "We have had in our language no other odes of the sublime kind, than that of Dryden on St. Cecilia's Day; for Cowley (who had his merit) yet wanted judgment, style, and harmony, for such a task. That of Pope is not worthy of so great a man. Mr. Mason indeed of late days has touched the true chords, and with a masterly hand, in some of his Choruses,--above all in the last of Caractacus: 'Hark! heard ye not yon footstep dread?' etc." (Gray).
112] daring Spirit: refers to Gray himself.
115] the Theban eagle. Pindar was a native of Thebes. "Pindar compares himself to that bird, and his enemies to ravens that croak and clamour in vain below, while it pursues its flight, regardless of their noise" (Gray).
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: Thomas Gray, Odes by Mr. Gray (Strawberry Hill: R. and J. Dodsley, 1757). D-10 4088 Fisher Rare Book Library (Toronto).
First publication date:
1757
RPO poem editor: G. G. Falle
RP edition: 3RP 2.224.
Recent editing: 4:2002/4/20
Composition date:
1754
Form: Pindaric Ode
Rhyme: irregularly rhyming