HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE HO2049 8/3/02"THOMAS GRAY'S "PROGRESS OF POETRY" QUESTION"
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From: "Patrick Roper" <patrickroper@hotmail.com>
Subject: Progress of Poesy query
Date: Sat, 03 Aug 2002 19:40:05 +0000
:   

I am reading ‘Haunted Hardy’ by Tim Armstrong (Palgrave, 2000) and I was 
interested in his comment (page 137) that Thomas Gray’s ‘Progress of Poesy’ 
is “one of the key intertextual references” in ‘A Pair of Blue Eyes’.

Having read Gray’s poem I continue to be somewhat baffled.   Is ‘Progress of 
Poesy’ one of the works of which TH was known to be particularly fond and, 
if so, why?

Perhaps the most significant lines in PoP are these:

O'er Idalia's velvet-green
  The rosy-crownéd Loves are seen
On Cytherea's day
  With antic Sports, and blue-eyed Pleasures,
  Frisking light in frolic measures;
Now pursuing, now retreating,
  Now in circling troops they meet:
To brisk notes in cadence beating,
  Glance their many-twinkling feet.
Slow melting strains their Queen's approach declare:
  Where'er she turns the Graces homage pay.
With arms sublime, that float upon the air,
  In gliding state she wins her easy way:
O'er her warm cheek and rising bosom move
The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love.

There seem to be several Hardyan chimes here.  ‘Cytherea’ is heroine of 
‘Desperate Remedies’,  and her second name, Graye, is almost the same as 
that of the poet.  ‘Blue-eyed pleasures’ has an obvious connotation and 
‘purple light’ (a Virgilian turn of phrase) occurs in PBE: “Elfride did not 
make her appearance inside the building till late in the afternoon, and came 
then by special invitation from Stephen during dinner.  She looked so 
intensely LIVING and full of movement as she came into the old silent place, 
that young Smith's world began to be lit by 'the purple light' in all its 
definiteness.”

There are other putative links but I feel the following lines about Milton 
may have some special Hardyan significance, though I am not sure what:

Nor second he, that rode sublime
Upon the seraph-wings of Ecstasy,
The secrets of th' abyss to spy.
He pass'd the flaming bounds of place and time:
The living Throne, the sapphire-blaze,
Where Angels tremble while they gaze,
He saw; but blasted with excess of light,
Closed his eyes in endless night.

I would be very grateful if anyone could shed any further light on all this.

Patrick Roper

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From: AnthnPrd@aol.com
Date: Sat, 3 Aug 2002 20:26:45 EDT
Subject: Re: Progress of Poesy query
 

St.Michaels Church, Stinsford...Angel is a real person...check out the small window and the Alpha and the Omega...look at the church bosses on the South and North sides...most importantly there is a large grave without a cross dedicated to a Jew... 
...in a Christian graveyard...very unusual. 
 
I cannot talk directly, you will either know or not...be careful...the families live still and in the same area. 
 
Tony

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From: "schweik" <schweik@fredonia.edu>
Subject: Re: Progress of Poesy query
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2002 16:59:54 GMT
 

Sorry to respond so belatedly to Patrick's inquiry,
but I've been out of town since August 2nd. 

In my review of the Armstrong book (see the TTHA
Reviews page) I noted some other claims that did
not seem to have merit.  This, I think, is another.
Of course the Milton reference in Gray's poem might
have some vague connection to *Ethelberta* who is
particularly attached to Milton, and Armstrong did
a study of Hardy's "Virgilian Purples." But his
claim is specifically about *APBE*, and like
Patrick I can find nothing to justify it.

Bob Schweik

schweik@fredonia.edu
schweikr@localnet.com

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