Explore "Stanzas to Mr. Bentley" by Thomas Gray on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.