[Hymn to Ignorance. A Fragment] Thomas Gray Alexander Huber Editor Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Broad Street Oxford OX1 3BG UK
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive
Taylor Institution Library St Giles' Oxford OX1 3NA UK info@eighteenthcenturypoetry.org https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/
Oxford This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Gray, Thomas, 1716-1771. Thomas Gray: English poems. Web. Oxford Thomas Gray Archive 2002 pp. []-[]. http://www.thomasgray.org/texts/poems.shtml

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[ Hymn to Ignorance . A Fragment ] Hail , horrors , hail ! ye ever-gloomy bowers , Ye gothic fanes and antiquated towers , Where rushy Camus' slowly-winding flood Perpetual draws his humid train of mud : Glad I revisit thy neglected reign ; Oh , take me to thy peaceful shade again . But chiefly thee , whose influence breathed from high Augments the native darkness of the sky ; Ah , Ignorance ! soft salutary power ! Prostrate with filial reverence I adore . Thrice hath Hyperion rolled his annual race , Since weeping I forsook thy fond embrace . Oh say , successful dost thou still oppose Thy leaden aegis 'gainst our ancient foes ? Still stretch , tenacious of thy right divine , The massy sceptre o'er thy slumbering line ? And dews Lethean through the land dispense To steep in slumbers each benighted sense ? If any spark of wit's delusive ray Break out , and flash a momentary day , With damp , cold touch forbid it to aspire , And huddle up in fogs the dangerous fire . Oh say — she hears me not , but , careless grown , Lethargic nods upon her ebon throne . Goddess ! awake , arise ! alas , my fears ! Can powers immortal feel the force of years ? Not thus of old , with ensigns wide unfurled , She rode triumphant o'er the vanquished world ; Fierce nations owned her unresisted might , And all was Ignorance , and all was Night . Oh ! sacred age ! Oh ! times for ever lost ! ( The schoolman's glory , and the churchman's boast . ) For ever gone — yet still to Fancy new , Her rapid wings the transient scene pursue , And bring the buried ages back to view . High on her car , behold the grandam ride Like old Sesostris with barbaric pride ; ... a team of harnessed monarchs bend ...