Ode to Adversity
— — Ζῆνα ...τὸν ϕρονεῖν βροτοὺς ὁδώ —σαντα, τῷ πάθει μαθάνΘέντα κυρίως ἔχειν.
Aeschylus, in Agamemnone.
1 Daughter of Jove, relentless power,
2 Thou tamer of the human breast,
3 Whose iron scourge and torturing hour,
4 The bad affright, afflict the best!
5 Bound in thy adamantine chain
6 The proud are taught to taste of pain,
7 And purple tyrants vainly groan
8 With pangs unfelt before, unpitied and alone.
9 When first thy Sire to send on earth
10 Virtue, his darling child, designed,
11 To thee he gave the heavenly birth,
12 And bade to form her infant mind.
13 Stern rugged nurse! thy rigid lore
14 With patience many a year she bore:
15 What sorrow was, thou bad'st her know,
16 And from her own she learned to melt at others' woe.
17 Scared at thy frown terrific, fly
18 Self-pleasing Folly's idle brood,
19 Wild Laughter, Noise, and thoughtless Joy,
20 And leave us leisure to be good.
21 Light they disperse, and with them go
22 The summer friend, the flattering foe;
23 By vain Prosperity received,
24 To her they vow their truth and are again believed.
25 Wisdom in sable garb arrayed,
26 Immersed in rapturous thought profound,
27 And Melancholy, silent maid
28 With leaden eye, that loves the ground,
29 Still on thy solemn steps attend:
30 Warm Charity, the general friend,
31 With Justice to herself severe,
32 And Pity, dropping soft the sadly-pleasing tear.
33 Oh, gently on thy suppliant's head,
34 Dread goddess, lay thy chastening hand!
35 Not in thy Gorgon terrors clad,
36 Nor circled with the vengeful band
37 (As by the impious thou art seen)
38 With thundering voice and threatening mien,
39 With screaming Horror's funeral cry,
40 Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.
41 Thy form benign, oh Goddess, wear,
42 Thy milder influence impart,
43 Thy philosophic train be there
44 To soften, not to wound my heart,
45 The generous spark extinct revive,
46 Teach me to love and to forgive,
47 Exact my own defects to scan,
48 What others are, to feel, and know myself a man.
About this text
Author: Thomas Gray
Themes:
hopelessness; vanity of life; grief; sadness; melancholy
Genres:
Miltonic verse; Spenserian stanza; ode
Text view / Document view
Source edition
Gray, Thomas, 1716-1771. Thomas Gray: English poems. Web. Oxford: Thomas Gray Archive, 2002. http://www.thomasgray.org/texts/poems.shtml
Editorial principles
Typography, spelling, capitalization, and punctuation have been cautiously modernized. The source of the text is given and all significant editorial interventions have been recorded in textual notes. This ECPA text has been edited to conform to the recommendations found in Level 5 of the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries version 4.0.0.
Other versions of this work
Other works by Thomas Gray
- Agrippina, a Tragedy ()
- The Alliance of Education and Government. A Fragment ()
- The Candidate ()
- [Caradoc] ()
- The Characters of the Christ-Cross Row, By a Critic, To Mrs — ()
- [Conan] ()
- [Couplet about Birds] ()
- The Death of Hoel From Aneurin, Monarch of the Bards, extracted from the Gododin ()
- THE DESCENT OF ODIN: AN ODE. (); The Descent of Odin. An Ode (From the Norse-Tongue,) in Bartholinus, de causis contemnendae mortis; Hafniae, 1689, Quarto. Upreis Odinn allda gautr, &c. ()
- An ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCH YARD. (); Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard ()
- [Epitaph on a Child] ()
- [Epitaph on Mrs Clerke] ()
- [Epitaph on Mrs Mason] ()
- [Epitaph on Sir William Williams] ()
- THE FATAL SISTERS: AN ODE. (); The Fatal Sisters. An Ode (From the Norse-Tongue,) in the ORCADES of Thormodus Torfaeus; Hafniae, 1697, Folio: and also in Bartholinus. Vitt er orpit fyrir valfalli, &c. ()
- [Hymn to Ignorance. A Fragment] ()
- Imitated from Propertius, Lib: 3: Eleg: 5: ()
- [Imitated] From Propertius. Lib: 2: Eleg: 1. ()
- [Impromptus] ()
- [Invitation to Mason] ()
- [Lines on Dr Robert Smith] ()
- Lines on the Accession of George III ()
- [Lines Spoken by the Ghost of John Dennis at the Devil Tavern] ()
- [Lines Written at Burnham] ()
- A Long Story ()
- ODE AT THE INSTALLATION OF HIS GRACE AUGUSTUS HENRY FITZROY, DUKE OF GRAFTON, CHANCELLOR OF THE UNIVERSITY. JULY 1, MDCCLXIX. (); Ode for Music ()
- An ODE On a distant Prospect of ETON COLLEGE. (); Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College ()
- ODE on the Death of a Favourite CAT, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes. (); Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes ()
- [Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude] ()
- ODE. (); Ode on the Spring ()
- ODE. (); The Progress of Poesy. A Pindaric Ode ()
- ODE. (); The Bard. A Pindaric Ode ()
- On L[or]d H[olland']s Seat near M[argat]e, K[en]t ()
- [Parody on an Epitaph] ()
- Satire on the Heads of Houses; or, Never a Barrel the Better Herring ()
- [Sketch of his Own Character] ()
- Song I ()
- Song II ()
- Sonnet [on the Death of Mr Richard West] ()
- Stanzas to Mr Bentley ()
- [Tophet] Inscription on a Portrait ()
- [Translation from Dante, Inferno Canto xxxiii 1-78] ()
- [Translation from Statius, Thebaid VI 646-88, 704-24] ()
- [Translation from Statius, Thebaid IX 319-26] ()
- [Translation] From Tasso [Gerusalemme Liberata] Canto 14, Stanza 32-9 ()
- THE TRIUMPHS OF OWEN: A FRAGMENT. (); The Triumphs of Owen. A Fragment from Mr. Evans's Specimens of the Welch Poetry; London, 1764, Quarto. ()
- [Verse Fragments] ()
- William Shakespeare to Mrs Anne, Regular Servant to the Revd Mr Precentor of York ()