Stanzas to Mr Bentley 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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Stanzas to Mr Bentley In silent gaze the tuneful choir among , Half pleased , half blushing , let the Muse admire , While Bentley leads her sister-art along , And bids the pencil answer to the lyre . See , in their course , each transitory thought Fixed by his touch a lasting essence take ; Each dream , in fancy's airy colouring wrought , To local symmetry and life awake ! The tardy rhymes that used to linger on , To censure cold and negligent of fame , In swifter measures animated run , And catch a lustre from his genuine flame . Ah ! could they catch his strength , his easy grace , His quick creation , his unerring line ; The energy of Pope they might efface , And Dryden's harmony submit to mine . But not to one in this benighted age Is that diviner inspiration given , That burns in Shakespeare's or in Milton's page , The pomp and prodigality of heaven . As when , conspiring in the diamond's blaze , The meaner gems , that singly charm the sight , Together dart their intermingled rays , And dazzle with a luxury of light . Enough for me , if to some feeling breast My lines a secret sympathy [...] And as their pleasing influence [...] A sigh of soft reflection [...] .