Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1892-10-29
wAKEMAN,S WANDERINGS.

| lS very tlreQ ne'6 aw1ully lively ana strong
Lady-Just as you please, Thomas.-Pick-
Me-Up.
| At the Shrine and Haunts of the Poet
| Gray-The Poet Traveller Among th e
Familiar Scenes of the EIegy-Stoke
| Manor, the Gray Monument and
the Ancient Stoke Poges Church
and Churchyard Wfnsomely Pict-
ured by a Loving and Poetic Pen.
| STOKE PoGEs, England, Oct. 12.
Tothe Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
| If the splendid scenic and historic envi-
ronment of Stoke Poges, the old home and
chief haunt of the poet Gray, is fine and
stirring, the place itself is one likely to
awaken the purest emotions of contempls-
ton and delight. There are no more
beautiful park and farm landscapes to be
found in England than in Buckingham
shire, which include the velvety reaches
and splendid parks and primeval forests
roundabout Windsor castle.
But Victoria can nowhere find in all the
sylvan retreats of Home Park, Middle
Park and Great Park, at Windsor, that in
| tense retirement and melodious solitude
which fostered the pensive and gentle
spirit breathing from every line of Gray
matchless "Elegy." Peace and repose
seem to brood upon all the lanes and fields.
If you come, as most visitors do, by way
of Windsor and Slough stations, you will
insensibly feel this the moment the latter
place has disappeared behind the elms,
and you are alone in the highways be-
tween the fields. Eternal Sabbath seems
to have descended upon the entire parish
of Stoke Poges and the manor of Stoke;
and, whatever the season of the year, the
languorous hush is always here and ever
close and unbroken.
| 1 often tramp out here from old London
town with auy manner of vagsrous excuse
for the idling vagabond journey. Each
| time am sure to discover some new lane
or hedge-bordered road leading to the nook
| and nest I ssek. Wherever 1 may be
when half dozen miles away, 1 follow
| blindly only the general direction towards
the tiny gray old spire which pushes above
| the soft bank of trees to the west; and
then, be it by broad highway, blossoming
lane or by footpath across the fields, there
is the same SURPRISING quiet beauty and
chsugeless atmosphere of rest.
One may only fancy it, but it seems that
even the carts upon the highways are more
noiseless here. Cotter and ploughboy,
farmer or grimy potter from the near
| rr;t
| cheeks, appear to move from house to
house or field to field, as If in pleasant
mood Kline in fields, dogs at doorways,
sheep in meadows, all browse or nod as in
| sleepy solstice time; while the birds,
though no less melodious here, tune their
lays as if hesitant of breaking, even with
joy, the sweet and tender spell. All this,
too is intensified by the peculiar retire.
ment of the central scene of the 'Elegy'
the Stoke Poges church and churchyard
Neither is at the wayside as is usual with
English country manorial churches. Un
less frat rightly directed, you would pas:
them many times upon the old north and
south highway from Slough. They lie tC
the west of the road hidden by denst
masses of trees. Opposite are pleasan
fields with here and there willow borderet
runlets of whipping water or shadowy
pools, where, in summer, are
The kline, breast-deep in the shadows at noon,
; When the flushed sun waits In saffrony skies:-
threadings of lanes and highways will
dainty vistas stretching to the horizon be
tween, and, if the trees are wind whipped
enough in autumn time, glimpses of th
) somber brown of Eton's embsttled walls
| with the great Round Tower of Windsor
, gray silhouette beyond.
If you know the way and have come ii
June or July when lawn and leaf are rich
est, you can see from the highway no NOR
than the chimney, or the caves, or bit o
the roof tiling of a little lodge beyond tn
gate. Overarching trees and luxuriou
creepers shut out the Stoke Park road t.
church and manor house completely
Leaving this, you enter q path leading
{ over little hillock through a tangled
maze of coppics and come, at the end O
: perhaps a hundred yards, to the hug
monument erected to the memory of Ora,
in 1899, by John Penn, grandson of VIII
! liam Penn, the then lord of Stoke manor
The design was by the noted James Wyatt
1t consists of a sarcophagus of heroic siz
: supported on lofty square freestone pc
i. destal, the whole reaching perhaps fort.
or fifty feet abovs the swsrd, which il
beautifully interspersed with flowers ant
protected by a surrounding sunken fence
1t is really the only important monu
ment to Gray in existence. vast sun
was once collected under pretense of
3 building fund in memory of Gray at Penn
{ broke Hall at Cambridge, where he wa
3 for many years one of the most illustriou
3 ornaments of the classic town. '1ndeed,
t says 80 excellent an authority as Gosse
''if strangers did not periodically inquir
, lat Cambridge for his room, 1t is probsbl
that the name of Gray would be com
3 pletely forgotten at Pembroke as at Peter
Q house (from which his cold bath at tn
hands of roistering fellow commoners on
9 January night in 1856, had driven him
/, where also no monument of any kind pre-
: serves the record of his presence"
And it is not an unpleasant reflection b
an American that near descendant of tn
great founder of great American com
monwealth was first to honor an imperish
able name in imperishable stone.
= The inscriptions on the four sides are i
keeping with the spirit of the spot an
It at once emphasize in the visitors mind th
}. close and loving association of poet, pos
u try and place. On the side facing th
: south approach is the following:
This Monument in honor of
~ Was Erected A. ID. 1923,
n Among the Scenery
Celebrated by that great Lyric and Elegaic Poe
He died in l1al,
And lies unnoted in the adjoining churchyar
- Under the tombstone on which he piously
And pathetically recorded the interment
OF his aunt and la nented mother.
is The other three inscriptions are from ii
n code to Eton College" and the "Elegy
That on the north side Is from the Ode:
y Ye distant spires! Ye antique towers.
v That crown the watery g'ade.
d Alb, happy hills! ah, pleasing shaded
All, fields beloved in vain!
,s Where once my careless childhood strayed,
40 A stranger yet to pain!
feel the gales that from ye blow,
TO momentary bliss bestow.
On the east eide are the following tv
g. stanzas from the "Elegy:"
le Beneath those rugged elms, that yew tres
w shade,
y Where heaves the turf in many q molder
heap,
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers Of the hamlet sleep.
,u The breezy call of incense-hreathing morn,
n The swallow twittering from the straw bu
TX The COCKS shrill clarion or the echoing horn.
No more shalt roose them from their low
-, bed.
w Again are lines from the "Elegy" chos,
for the inscription on the western fscad