Thomas Gray

 

 

 

Text
Editionsbericht
Literatur: Gray
Literatur: Pindar-Rezeption
Literatur: Ode
Literatur: Poetologische Lyrik

 

5                     O D E  
 
 
                    I. 1.

[5] AWAKE, Æolian lyre, awake,
And give to rapture all thy trembling strings.
From Helicon's harmonious springs
A thousand rills their mazy progress take:
The laughing flowers, that round them blow,
10   Drink life and fragrance as they flow.
Now the rich stream of music winds along
Deep, majestic, smooth, and strong,
Thro' verdant vales, and Ceres' golden reign:
Now rolling down the steep amain,
15   Headlong, impetuous, see it pour:
The rocks and nodding groves rebellow to the roar.
 
 
                    I. 2.

    [6] Oh! Sovereign of the willing soul,
Parent of sweet and solemn-breathing airs,
Enchanting shell! the sullen Cares
20   And frantic Passions hear thy soft control.
On Thracia's hills the Lord of War,
Has curb'd the fury of his car,
And dropp'd his thirsty lance at thy command.
Perching on the scept'red hand
25   Of Jove, thy magic lulls the feather'd king
With ruffled plumes and flagging wing:
Quench'd in dark clouds of slumber lie
The terror of his beak, and light'nings of his eye.
 
 
                    I. 3.

    Thee the voice, the dance, obey,
30   Temper'd to thy warbled lay.
O'er Idalia's velvet-green
The rosy-crowned Loves are seen
On Cytherea's day
With antic Sports and blue-ey'd Pleasures,
35   [7] Frisking light in frolic measures;
Now pursuing, now retreating,
Now in circling troops they meet:
To brisk notes in cadence beating
Glance their many-twinkling feet.
40   Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare:
Where'er she turns the Graces homage pay.
With arms sublime, that float upon the air,
In gliding state she wins her easy way:
O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move
45   The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.
 
 
                    II. 1.

    Man's feeble race what Ills await,
Labour, and Penury, the racks of Pain,
Disease, and Sorrow's weeping train,
And Death, sad refuge from the storms of Fate!
50   The fond complaint, my Song, disprove,
And justify the laws of Jove.
Say, has he giv'n in vain the heav'nly Muse?
Night, and all her sickly dews,
Her Spectres wan, and Birds of boding cry,
55   He gives to range the dreary sky:
[8] Till down the eastern cliffs afar
Hyperion's march they spy, and glitt'ring shafts of war.
 
 
                    II. 2.

    In climes beyond the solar road,
Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,
60   The Muse has broke the twilight-gloom
To cheer the shiv'ring Native's dull abode.
And oft, beneath the od'rous shade
Of Chili's boundless forests laid,
She deigns to hear the savage Youth repeat
65   In loose numbers wildly sweet
Their feather-cinctur'd Chiefs, and dusky Loves.
Her track, where'er the Goddess roves,
Glory pursue, and generous Shame,
Th' unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame.
70    
 
                    II. 3.

    Woods, that wave o'er Delphi's steep,
Isles, that crown th' Ægean deep,
Fields, that cool Ilissus laves,
Or where Mæander's amber waves
[9] In ling'ring Lab'rinths creep,
75   How do your tuneful Echoes languish,
Mute, but to the voice of Anguish?
Where each old poetic Mountain
Inspiration breath'd around:
Ev'ry shade and hallow'd Fountain
80   Murmur'd deep a solemn sound:
Till the sad Nine in Greece's evil hour
Left their Parnassus for the Latian plains.
Alike they scorn the pomp of tyrant Power,
And coward Vice, that revels in her chains
85   When Latium had her lofty spirit lost,
They sought, O Albion! next thy sea-encircled coast.
 
 
                    III. 1.

    Far from the sun and summer-gale,
In thy green lap was Nature's darling laid,
What time, where lucid Avon stray'd,
90   To Him the mighty Mother did unveil
Her awful face: the dauntless Child
Stretch'd forth his little arms, and smiled.
[10] This pencil take (she said) whose colours clear Richly paint the vernal year:
95   Thine too these golden keys, immortal Boy!
This can unlock the gates of Joy;
Of Horror that, and thrilling Fears,
Or ope the sacred source of sympathetic Tears.
 
 
                    III. 2.

    Nor second He, that rode sublime
100   Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy,
The secrets of th' Abyss to spy.
He pass'd the flaming bounds of Place and Time:
The living Throne, the sapphire-blaze,
Where Angels tremble, while they gaze,
105   He saw; but blasted with excess of light,
Clos'd his eyes in endless night.
Behold, where Dryden's less presumptuous car,
Wide o'er the fields of Glory bear
Two Coursers of ethereal race,
110   With necks in thunder cloth'd, and long-resounding pace.
 
 
                    III. 3.

    [11] Hark, his hands thy lyre explore!
Bright-eyed Fancy hovering o'er
Scatters from her pictur'd urn
Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.
115   But ah! 'tis heard no more------------
O Lyre divine, what daring Spirit
Wakes thee now? tho' he inherit
Nor the pride, nor ample pinion,
That the Theban Eagle bear,
120   Sailing with supreme dominion
Thro' the azure deep of air:
Yet oft before his infant eyes would run
Such forms, as glitter in the Muse's ray
With orient hues, unborrow'd of the Sun:
  Yet shall he mount, and keep his distant way
Beyond the limits of a vulgar fate,
Beneath the good how far---------but far above the great.

 

 

 

 

Erstdruck und Druckvorlage

Odes by Mr. Gray.
[London]: Printed at Strawberry-Hill, for R. and J. Dodsley 1757, S. 5-11.

Die Textwiedergabe erfolgt nach dem ersten Druck (Editionsrichtlinien).

URL: https://www.thomasgray.org/texts/diglib/primary/1757

 

 

Aufgenommen in

 

Kommentierte und kritische Ausgaben

 

 

 

Literatur: Gray

Cohen, Ralph: The return to the ode. In: The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry. Hrsg. von John Sitter. Cambridge u.a. 2001, S. 203-224.

Hopkins, David / Martindale, Charles (Hrsg.): The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature. Bd. 3: 1660-1790. Oxford 2012.

Keener, Frederick M.: Implication, Readers' Resources, and Thomas Gray's Pindaric Odes. Newark, Del. 2012.

Keith, Jennifer: Lyric. In: The Oxford Handbook of British Poetry, 1660-1800. Hrsg. von Jack Lynch. Oxford 2016, S. 579-595.

Levine, William: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime: Gray's Transvaluation of Pope's Poetics. In: Philological Quarterly 70.3 (1991), S. 289-309.

London, April: Literary History Writing, 1770-1820. London 2010.

Sitter, John: Political, satirical, didactic and lyric poetry (II) after Pope. In: The Cambridge history of English literature, 1660-1780. Hrsg. von John Richetti. Cambridge u.a. 2005, S. 287-315.

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Literatur: Pindar-Rezeption

Brix, Michel: Pindare en France de Boileau à Villemain. In: Les Études classiques 63 (1995), S. 135-153.

Brokoff, Jürgen u.a. (Hrsg.): Norbert von Hellingrath und die Ästhetik der europäischen Moderne. Göttingen 2014 (= Castrum Peregrini; Neue Folge, 7).

Buisson, Georges: Les débuts de Le Brun dans l'ode pindarique. In: L'ode, en cas de toute liberté poétique. Actes du colloque organisé à l'Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail les 14-15-16 janvier 2004. Hrsg. von Didier Alexandre. Bern u.a. 2007 (= Littératures de langue française, 3), S. 23-42.

Burdorf, Dieter: Der Berglöwe. Rudolf Borchardts Pindar – mit einem Exkurs zu Pindar bei Friedrich Nietzsche. In: Rudolf Borchardt und Friedrich Nietzsche. Schreiben und Denken im Zeichen der Philologie. Hrsg. von Christian Benne u. Dieter Burdorf Berlin 2017, S. 73-93.

Currie, Bruno / Rutherford, Ian (Hrsg.): The Reception of Greek Lyric Poetry in the Ancient World. Transmission, Canonization and Paratext. Leiden u. Boston 2020 (= Studies in Archaic and Classical Greek Song, 5).

Fitzgerald, William: Agonistic Poetry. The Pindaric Mode in Pindar, Horace, Hölderlin, and the English Ode. Berkeley u.a. 1988.

Foster, Margaret u.a. (Hrsg.): Genre in Archaic and Classical Greek Poetry. Theories and Models. Leiden u. Boston 2020 (= Studies in Archaic and Classical Greek Song, 4).

Fowler, Robert L.: Pindar and the Sublime. Greek Myth, Reception, and Lyric Experience. London 2022.

Girot, Jean-Eudes: Pindare avant Ronsard. De l'émergence du grec à la publication des "Quatres premiers livres des Odes" de Ronsard. Genève 2002.

Hamilton, John T.: Poetica Obscura: Reexamining Hamann's Contribution to the Pindaric Tradition. In: Eighteenth-Century Studies 34.1 (2000), S. 93-115.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/ecs.2000.0057

Hopkins, David / Martindale, Charles (Hrsg.): The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature. Bd. 3: 1660 - 1790. Oxford 2012.

Kampakoglou, Alexandros: Studies in the Reception of Pindar in Ptolemaic Poetry. Berlin u. Boston 2019.

Keener, Frederick M.: Implication, Readers' Resources, and Thomas Gray's Pindaric Odes. Newark 2012.

Krummacher, Hans-Henrik: Principes Lyricorum. Pindar- und Horazkommentare seit dem Humanismus als Quellen der neuzeitlichen Lyriktheorie. In: Ders., Lyra. Studien zur Theorie und Geschichte der Lyrik vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Berlin u.a. 2013, S. 3-76.

Krummacher, Hans-Henrik: Pindar – Horaz – Ossian. Zur Entwicklung von Herders Lyrikanschauung. In: Ders., Lyra. Studien zur Theorie und Geschichte der Lyrik vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert. Berlin u.a. 2013, S. 125-179.

Maslov, Boris: Pindar and the Emergence of Literature. Cambridge 2015.

Maus, Katharine Eisaman: The Oxford English Literary History. Bd. 4: 1603–1660. Literary Cultures of the Early Seventeenth Century. Oxford 2025.
Kap. II,3: Thinking About Genre in Seventeenth-Century England.

Meyer-Sickendiek, Burkhard: Affektpoetik. Eine Kulturgeschichte literarischer Emotionen. Würzburg 2005.

Revard, Stella P.: Politics, Poetics, and the Pindaric Ode, 1450-1700. Tempe, Ariz. 2009.

Schmitz, Thomas; Pindar in der französischen Renaissance. Studien zu seiner Rezeption in Philologie, Dichtungstheorie und Dichtung. Göttingen 1993.

Undusk, Jaan: Pindar als Erneuerer der europäischen Dichtung. Am Beispiel von Johann Wolfgang Goethe und Kristian Jaak Peterson. In: Baltische Literaturen in der Goethezeit. Hrsg. von Heinrich Bosse u.a. Würzburg 2011, 131-186.

Vance, Norman / Wallace, Jennifer (Hrsg.): The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature. Bd. 4: 1790-1880. Oxford 2015.

Vöhler, Martin: Ein Adler über den Krähen? Zur Funktion der Antike im europäischen Kulturtransfer des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts am Beispiel Pindars. In: Europäischer Kulturtransfer im 18. Jahrhundert. Literaturen in Europa – Europäische Literatur. Hrsg. von Barbara Schmidt-Haberkamp u.a. Berlin 2003 (= Aufklärung und Europa, 13), S. 163-177.

Vöhler, Martin: Pindarrezeptionen. Sechs Studien zum Wandel des Pindarverständnisses von Erasmus bis Herder. Heidelberg 2005 (= Bibliothek der klassischen Altertumswissenschaften; Reihe 2, N.F., 117).

Vöhler, Martin: Hölderlins Pindar. Zum Öffentlichkeitsbezug von Hölderlins "Spätwerk". In: Hölderlin-Jahrbuch 41 (2018/19), S. 33-54.

Wilkinson, Elizabeth M. / Willoughby, L. A.: Goethe's 'Pindar' Letter to Herder, July 1772. Some Problems of Pedagogic Presentation. In: Elizabeth M. Wilkinson / L. A. Willoughby: Models of Wholeness. Some Attitudes to Language, Art and Life in the Age of Goethe. Hrsg. von Jeremy Adler u.a. Oxford u.a. 2002 (= Britische und Irische Studien zur deutschen Sprache und Literatur, 30), S. 127-142.

 

 

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Lyriktheorie » R. Brandmeyer