Note 368-33 — ELEGY
Reading edition
As first written, the poem contained the following stanza, placed before the epitaph; but in the final revision Gray rejected it as unworthy. It seems a very critical taste that would reject such lines as these:
“There scatter’d oft, the earliest of the year, By hands unseen are show’rs of violets found: The redbreast loves to build and warble there, And little footsteps lightly print the ground.”