Note 365-23 — ELEGY

The three stanzas beginning at this point make but one sentence. Turned into prose the sentence would read: “Their lot forbade them to command the applause of listening senates, to despise the threats of pain and ruin, to scatter plenty o’er a smiling land, and read their history in a nation’s eyes: their lot not only circumscribed their growing virtues but confined their crimes as well; it forbade them to wade through slaughter to a throne and shut the gates of mercy on mankind, to hide the struggling pangs of conscious truth, to quench the blushes of ingenuous shame, and to heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride with incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.”