Love and fear may dry up "soft springs of pity" in the heart and freeze them
— Gray, Thomas (1716-1771)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
York
Publisher
Mason
Date
1775
Metaphor
Love and fear may dry up "soft springs of pity" in the heart and freeze them
Metaphor in Context
And you, ye manes of ambition's victims,
Enshrined Claudius, with the pitied ghosts
Of the Syllani, doomed to early death
(Ye unavailing horrors, fruitless crimes!),
If from the realms of night my voice ye hear,
In lieu of penitence and vain remorse,
Accept my vengeance. Though by me ye bled,
He was the cause. My love, my fears for him,
Dried the soft springs of pity in my heart,
And froze them up with deadly cruelty.
Yet if your injured shades demand my fate,
If murder cries for murder, blood for blood,
Let me not fall alone; but crush his pride,
And sink the traitor in his mother's ruin.
(ll. 169-82, p. 42-3)
Enshrined Claudius, with the pitied ghosts
Of the Syllani, doomed to early death
(Ye unavailing horrors, fruitless crimes!),
If from the realms of night my voice ye hear,
In lieu of penitence and vain remorse,
Accept my vengeance. Though by me ye bled,
He was the cause. My love, my fears for him,
Dried the soft springs of pity in my heart,
And froze them up with deadly cruelty.
Yet if your injured shades demand my fate,
If murder cries for murder, blood for blood,
Let me not fall alone; but crush his pride,
And sink the traitor in his mother's ruin.
(ll. 169-82, p. 42-3)
Provenance
HDIS
Citation
Reading Roger Lonsdale's edition of The Poems of Thomas Gray, William Collins, and Oliver Goldsmith (London and New York: Longman and Norton: 1972).
Date of Entry
11/10/2003
