Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.
        (Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, 95-100)

1. The Bard: A Pindaric Ode
2. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
3. The Fatal Sisters: An Ode
4. Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College
5. Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes
6. Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude
7. Ode on the Spring
8. On the Death of Richard West
9. The Progress of Poesy: A Pindaric Ode

Biographical information

Given name: Thomas
Family name: Gray
Birth date: 26 December 1716
Death date: 30 July 1771
Nationality: English
Family relations
          father: Philip Gray
          mother: Dorothy Gray
Languages
          English
          French
          Latin
          Greek
Education
          Eton College: 1727
          Peterhouse, Cambridge: 9 October 1734 to 1738
          Peterhouse, Cambridge (LL.B.): 1742 to 1743
Literary period: Augustan
Occupation: Professor: 1768
Residences
          Burnham
          Cornhill, London: 26 December 1716
          Cambridge: 1742 to 1759
          Southampton Row, Bloomsbury, London: 1759 to 1761
          Cambridge: 1761 to 1771
Cause of death: Gout
Buried at: Stoke Poges
First RPO edition: 1994-1998