Thinking Of Gray On A Grey Day

I hadn't a lot of time this afternoon so decided to have a quick walk around the churchyard of the Grade 1 listed, twelfth century, All Saints Nazeing.

It was cold and grey on top of the hill where the church stands. The 'tchack, tchack' of the Jackdaws and the 'flip-flap' of the rope on the flagpole added to the sombre churchyard atmosphere. I followed a public footpath into the valley which ended abruptly at a road so turned back towards the church. I took the above pic soon after I had watched a huge bumble bee looking for a home. I always think of Gray's Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard in situations like this. (Nazeing was one of the places where plague victims were brought in barges from London to be buried.)

Since I've been home I've been reading another of Gray's poems, Ode On The Spring.
 
"Yet hark, how thro' the peopled air
         The busy murmur glows!
The insect youth are on the wing,
Eager to taste the honied spring,
         And float amid the liquid noon:
Some lightly o'er the current skim,
Some show their gaily-gilded trim
         Quick-glancing to the sun."


Though the theme is the dark and depressing one of human mortality, written by a man who was the only one of his twelve siblings to survive infancy, I love the above excerpt about the promise of busy insect murmur.