This is the most horrid picture of

human misery.

Moody-seems here to signify something more than angry; which is the general signification given by Johnson -it seems here to denote the peculiar tenacity or obstinacy with which the mind holds to one temper, mode, or disposition.

"Lo, in the vale of years beneath

A grisly troop are seen,

The painful family of Death,

More hideous than their Queen;

This racks the joints, this fires the veins,

That every labouring sinew strains,

Those in the deeper vitals rage;

Lo, Poverty to fill the band,

That numbs the soul with icy hand,

And slow-consuming Age."

The vale of years. Life is sometimes considered as a journey, be

ginning at the bottom of a hill in youth, which is climbed as we advance in middle age to its summit, and down which we rapidly descend in old agethe bottom of this hill is therefore called by the poet the vale of years.

The vale of years is a Scriptural expression.

Painful family of death.-Diseases are with propriety called the family of death.

More hideous than their queen.

There is no authority for putting death in the feminine gender in our language. Death is feminine in Latin, French, and in Italian.

This, that, and those, in the following lines-mean, This disease, that disease, and those diseases which may be called the family of death.

Vitals-Those parts of the human which life immediately de

body upon

pends..

With icy hand.-Poverty is represented as numbing the faculties like frost.

"To each his sufferings: all are men,

Condemned alike to groan;

The tender for another's pain,

Th' unfeeling for his own.

Yet, ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.

Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more, where ignorance is bliss,
"Tis folly to be wise."

To each his sufferings. There is no verb in this sentence. The verb are or belong is understood.

Th unfeeling for his own.-There is an apparent contradiction in this

sentence; how can that man groan for his sufferings who does not feel? Unfeeling here is used comparatively, and means to describe a man who has not as much feeling or sympathy as others have for their fellow-creatures, but who from selfishness feels bitterly his own sufferings.

2

But ah! why should they know their fate.

The poet now returns to the chil dren, of whom he had been speaking, and says it is better not to tell them of the evil fate to which they are destined.

Since sorrow never comes too late, &c.

These two lines express a very common sentiment in very common language.

E

Thought would destroy their paradise. Paradise is the name in Scripture for the garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve were placed by Providence; it from hence became a term expressive of any extraordinary state of happi

ness.

The word paradise sometimes is applied to represent that state of false happiness with which fools deceive themselves, by indulging vain ima ginations-this is called "the fool's paradise." Perhaps the poet had this idea in his thoughts.