Brian’s Reflection: Wednesday, December 26, 2007
[ Boxing Day ]


"ELEGY WRITTEN INA COUNTRY CHURCH-YARD"

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

…..The Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melacholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.

- Thomas Gray, poet, born on this day, 1716


It’s Boxing Day to us colonials of the Dominions. The day when the “upper classes” gave gifts to the “lower classes”. We shall assume that this was, in the culture of the times, thoughtful. An expression of gratitude towards those who made life “work” and comfortable.

I elide to the “box” we shall all be carried out in eventually. And I love Gray’s beautiful line as a simple symbol of what life shall have been: He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

Life is given us. May our bounty be great; our soul sincere. And the “friend from Heaven” walk with us.

Brian+

Grays elegy in full: http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Poetry/Elegy.htm