Regarding Thomas Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College"

The other night I witnessed a friend being threatened with murder and was for some reason reminded of Thomas Gray's extraordinary poem, "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College." It's a pretty palliative poem despite its drawing a woefully stark picture of the inevitability of pain and folly in our lives, and it comments principally on the fence of ignorance we maintain around our lives to keep out that collection of harsh truths we otherwise call reality.

David Lehman recently mentioned ...