There scatter'd oft, the earliest of the year,
By hands unseen are showers of violets found;
The redbreast loves to build and warble there,
And little footsteps lightly print the ground.

I have often wondered how Gray could bear to give up these sweet, tender
and most natural lines. I have sometimes surmised that he thought them a
little too much like Ambrose Philips's verses about children--Namby
Pamby Philips, as the Pope set nicknamed that unfortunate writer.

I lingered about the churchyard until that long twilight, of which we
know nothing in America, began to grow dimmer and dimmer. If it was
still before, it seemed all the stiller now. I was glad that I had
waited so long, because by doing so I understood all the better how true
the Elegy is to nature. The neighborhood, with its agreeable variety of
meadow and wood, has all the hundred charms of the gentle and winning
English scenery. The hush, hardly broken even by the songs of the birds,
brought forcibly to my mind that beautiful line of the Elegy: "And all
the air a solemn stillness holds;" while that other line: "Now fades the
glimmering landscape on the sight," is exactly true. The landscape did
glimmer, and as I watched the sun go down, I pleased myself with the
fancy that I was sitting just where the poet sat, as he revolved those
lines which the world has got by heart. Just then came the cry of the
cattle, and I knew why Gray wrote: "The lowing herd winds slowly o'er
the lea," nor did I fail to encounter a plowman homeward plodding his
weary way.

As I strolled listlessly back to the station, there was such a serenity
on the earth about me, and in the sky above me, that I could easily give
myself to gentle memories and poetic dreams. I recalled the springtime