Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

First page of Dodsley's illustrated edition of Gray's Elegy with illustration by Richard Bentley

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is a poem by Thomas Gray, completed in 1750 and first published in 1751. The poem's origins are debated, but it was inspired by Gray's thoughts following the death of the poet Richard West in 1742. Originally titled "Stanza's Wrote in a Country Church-Yard", Gray was prompted to finish the poem after the death of his aunt and other tragic events occurring at the end of 1749. The poem was completed in June 1750 as Gray was near the Stoke Poges churchyard and it was sent to his friend Horace Walpole, who popularised the poem among London literary circles. Eventually, Gray was forced to publish the work on 15 February 1751 to pre-empt a magazine publisher from printing an unlicensed copy of the poem.

An elegy in name, the poem is not an elegy in the true sense; it employs a similar style to contemporary odes, but it does embody a meditation on death, and remembrance after death. The poem argues that the remembrance can be good and bad, and the narrator finds comfort in pondering the lives of the obscure rustics who are buried in the churchyard. The two versions of the poem approach death in a different manner; the first version contains a more stoic response to death, but the final version of the poem contains an epitaph which serves to repress the narrator's fear of dying. With its discussion of and focus on the obscure and the known, the poem has possible political ramifications, but it does not make any definite claims on politics to be more universal in its approach to life and death.

The poem quickly became popular. It was printed many times, and praised by critics even after Gray's other poetry had fallen out of favour. Later critics tended to praise the language and universal aspects of the poem, but some felt that the ending was unconvincing, in that it failed to resolve the questions raised by the poem, or that the poem did not do enough to present a political statement that would serve to help the obscure rustic poor who form a central image in the poem.

Background

Thomas Gray

Gray's life was surrounded by loss and death, and he knew that many people around him died painfully and alone. In 1749, many events took place that would cause Gray stress. On 7 November, Mary Antrobus, Gray's aunt, died; her death devastated his family. The loss was compounded by news that followed a few days afterward that Horace Walpole, Gray's close friend, yet one he just recently disputed with, was almost killed by two highwaymen who demanded his money. Although Walpole survived and later joked about the event, the incident disrupted Gray's ability to pursue his scholarship. The events dampened the mood during that Christmas and Antrobus's death was ever fresh in the minds of the Gray family. As a side effect, the events also caused Gray to spend much of his time contemplating his mortality.

As Gray began to contemplate various aspects of mortality, he combined his desire to determine a view of order and progress present in the Classical world with aspects of his own life. With spring nearing, Gray questioned if his own life would enter into a sort of rebirth cycle or if, he was to die, if there would be anyone to remember him. Gray's meditations during spring 1750 turned to how the reputation of individuals would survive in the future. Eventually, Gray remembered some lines of poetry that he composed in 1742 following the death of West, a poet he knew. Using that previous material, he began to compose a poem that would serve as an answer to the various questions he was considering.

On 3 June 1750, Gray moved to Stoke Poges and on 12 June he completed Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Immediately, he included the poem in a letter to Walpole and sent it to him. The letter claims:

As I live in a place where even the ordinary tattle of the town arrives not till it is stale, and which produces no events of its own, you will not desire any excuse from me for writing so seldom, especially as of all people living I know you are the least a friend to letters spun out of one's own brains, with all the toil and constraint that accompanies sentimental productions. I have been here at Stoke a few days (where I shall continue good part of the summer); and having put an end to a thing, whose beginnings you have seen long ago. I immediately send it you. You will, I hope, look upon it in light of a thing with an end to it; a merit that most of my writing have wanted, and are like to want, but which this epistle I am determined shall not want

The letter reveals that Gray felt that the poem was unimportant, and that he did not expect it to become as popular or influential as it later became. Gray dismisses its positives as merely being that he was able to complete the poem, which was probably influenced by his experience of the churchyard at Stoke Poges, where he attended the Sunday service and was able to visit the grave of Antrobus.

The version that was later published and reprinted was a 32-stanza version with the "Epitaph" conclusion. Before the final poem was published, it was circulated in London society by Walpole who ensured that it would be a popular topic of discussion throughout 1750. By February 1751, Gray received word that William Owen, the publisher of the Magazine of Magazines, would print the poem on 16 February without his approval and the copyright laws at the time would not allow Gray to stop the publication. He sought Walpole's help with the matter and they were able to convince Robert Dodsley to print the poem on 15 February as a quarto pamphlet. Walpole added a preface to the poem reading: "The following POEM came into my hands by Accident, if the general Approbation with which this little Piece has been spread, may be call'd by so slight a Term as Accident. It is the Approbation which makes it unnecessary for me to make any Apology but to the Author: As he cannot but feel some Satisfaction in having pleas'd so many Readers already, I flatter myself he will forgive my communicating that Pleasure to many more."

The pamphlet contained woodblock illustrations and was printed without attribution to Gray upon his request. Immediately after, Owen's magazine with Gray's poem was printed but contained multiple errors and other problems. In a 20 February letter to Walpole, Gray thanked him for intervening and helping to get a quality version of the poem published before Owen. It was so popular that it was reprinted twelve times and reproduced in many different periodicals until 1765, including in Gray's Six Poems (1753), in his Odes (1757), and volume four of Dodsley's 1755 compilation of poetry. There were many translations of the poem into Latin, including versions by Christopher Anstey, Robert Lloyd and others. It was translated into Greek by Gulielmi Cooke, John Norbury, Tew of Eton, Stephen Weston, and Charles Coote.

Composition

Holograph manuscript of Gray's "Stanzas Wrote in a Country Church-yard"

The origins of the poem were most likely found in the poetry that Gray composed in 1742. William Mason, who knew Gray and discussed Gray in his Memoirs, stated: "I am inclined to believe that the Elegy in a Country Church-yard was begun, if not concluded, at this time [August 1742] also: Though I am aware that as it stands at present, the conclusion is of a later date; how that was originally I shall show in my notes on the poem". Mason's argument was only a guess, but he argued that one of Gray's poems from the Eton Manuscript, a copy of Gray's handwritten poems owned by Eton College, was a 22 stanza rough draft of the Elegy called "Stanza's Wrote in a Country Church-Yard". The manuscript copy contained many ideas which were reworked and revised as he attempted to work out the ideas that would later form the Elegy. A later copy was entered into Gray's Commonplace Book and a third version, included in an 18 December 1750 letter, was sent to Thomas Wharton. The draft sent to Walpole was subsequently lost.

There are two possible ways the poem was composed. The first, Mason's concept, argues that the Eton copy was the original for the Elegy poem and was complete in itself. Later critics claimed that the original was more complete than the later version; Roger Lonsdale argued that the early version had a balance that set up the debate, and was clearer than the later version. Londsdale also argued that the early poem fit classical models, including Virgil's Georgics and Horace's Epodes. The early version of the poem was finished, according to Mason, in August 1742, but there is little evidence to give such a definite date. Mason argued that the poem was in response to West's death, but there is little to justify that Mason would know such information.

Instead, Walpole wrote to Mason and claimed: "The Churchyard was, I am persuaded, posterior to West's death at least three or four years, as you will see by my note. At least I am sure that I had the twelve or more first lines from himself above three years after that period, and it was long before he finished it." The two did not resolve their disagreement of the events, but Walpole did concede the matter to possibly keep epistolary decorum between the two. Regardless, Gray's outline of the events provides the second possible way the poem was composed: the first lines of the poem were written sometime in 1746 and he probably wrote more of the poem during the time than Walpole claimed. The epistolary evidence verifies the likelihood of Walpole's dating the composition, as Gray stated in the 12 June 1750 letter that Gray saw the first lines of the poem and the two were not on speaking terms until after 1745. The only other letter to discuss the poem was one sent to Wharton on 11 September 1746, which alludes to the poem being worked on.

Genre

Gray's Elegy is not a conventional part of Theocritus's elegaic tradition because it doesn't mourn an individual as is common in the tradition. The use of "elegy" is related to the poem relying on the concept of lacrimae rerum, or despair regarding the human condition. The poem lacks many standard features of the elegy: an invocation, mourners, flowers, and mention of shepherds. The theme does not emphasise loss like other elegies and the focus on nature is for setting and not a primary component of the poem's theme. It can be included in the tradition as a memorial poem, although not necessarily for one individual, and the poem contains thematic elements of the elegiac genre, especially mourning. The model for Gray's choice of genre and style is likely Milton's Lycidas but it lacks many of the ornamental aspects found within Milton's poem. When the two poems are compared, Milton's is more artificially designed while Gray's is natural.

In its use of the English countryside, the poem is connected to the picturesque tradition found in John Dyer's Grongar Hill (1726) and later in James Beattie's The Minstrel (1771) and Richard Crowe's Lewesdon Hill (1788). However, his poem differs from this tradition in that it focuses on the poet's own death. Much of the poem deals with questions that were linked to Gray's own life; during composition of the poem, he was confronted with the death of others and questioned his own mortality. The poem, though universal in its statements on life and death, was grounded in Gray's own feelings about his own life and served as an epitaph for himself. As a self-epitaph, Gray's poem falls within an old poetic tradition of poets contemplating their legacy. The poem, as an elegy, also serves to lament the death of others, including West. This is not to say that Gray's poem was like others of the graveyard school of poetry; instead, Gray tries to avoid a description that would evoke the horror common to other poems in the elegiac tradition. This is compounded further by the narrator trying to avoid an emotional response to death through relying on rhetorical questions and discussing what his surroundings lack.

Additionally, the poem is connected to the ode tradition found within Gray's other works and in those of Joseph Warton and William Collins and to a lesser extent in English ballads. The poem, as it developed from its original form, incorporated various traditional poetic techniques and partly relied on the diction of those like Petrarch. In the shift between the first version and the final version, the poem becomes more Miltonic and less Horatian in its form. Of the language, the poem actively relied on "English" techniques and language. The stanza form, quatrains with an ABAB rhyme scheme, was common to English poetry and used throughout the 16th century while any foreign diction that Gray relied on was merged with English words and phrases to give them an "English" feel. Many of the foreign words Gray adapted were previously used by William Shakespeare or John Milton, securing an "English" tone, and he emphasized monosyllabic words throughout his elegy to add a rustic English tone.

Poem

The poem begins in a churchyard with a narrator who is describing his surroundings in vivid detail. The narrator emphasizes both aural and visual sensations as he examines the area in relation to himself:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea

The plowman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r

The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,

Molest her ancient solitary reign. (lines 1–12)

As the poem continues, the narrator begins to focus less on the countryside and more on his immediate surroundings. His descriptions begin to move from sensations to his own thoughts about the dead. As the poem changes, the narrator begins to emphasize what is not present in the scene as the narrator contrasts an obscure country life with a life that is remembered. This contemplation provokes the narrator's thoughts on waste that comes in nature:

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,

And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast

The little tyrant of his fields withstood;

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,

The threats of pain and ruin to despise,

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,

And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes,

Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib'd alone

Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd;

Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,

To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,

Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride

With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. (lines 53–72)

The narrator focuses on the inequities that come from death, obscuring individuals, while he begins to resign himself to his own inevitable fate. As the poem ends, the narrator begins to deal with death in a direct manner as he discusses how humans desire to be remembered. As the narrator does so, the poem shifts and the first narrator is replaced by a second who describes the first's death:

For thee, who mindful of th' unhonour'd Dead

Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;

If chance, by lonely contemplation led,

Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,

Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,

"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away

To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. (lines 93–100)

The poem concludes with a description of the poet's grave that the narrator is meditating over along with a description of the end of that poet's life:

"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech

That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,

His listless length at noontide would he stretch,

And pore upon the brook that babbles by.

"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,

Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove,

Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,

Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.

"One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,

Along the heath and near his fav'rite tree;

Another came; nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

"The next with dirges due in sad array

Slow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne.

Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,

Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged thorn." (lines 101–116)

An epitaph is included after the conclusion of the poem. The epitaph reveals that the poet whose grave is the focus of the poem was unknown and obscure. The poet was separated from the other common people because he was unable to join with the common affairs of life, and circumstance kept him from becoming something greater:

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth

A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.

Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,

And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,

Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:

He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,

He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.

No farther seek his merits to disclose,

Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,

(There they alike in trembling hope repose)

The bosom of his Father and his God. (lines 117–128)

The original conclusion from the earlier version of the poem promotes the view that humans should be resigned to the fact that we will die, which differs from the indirect, third person description in the final version:

The thoughtless World to majesty may bow

Exalt the brave, & idolize Success

But more to Innocence their Safety owe

Than Power & Genius e'er conspired to bless

And thou, who mindful of the unhonour'd Dead

Dost in these Notes thy artless Tale relate

By Night & lonely contemplation led

To linger in the gloomy Walks of Fate

Hark how the sacred Calm, that broods around

Bids ev'ry fierce tumultous Passion ease

In still small Accents whisp'ring from the Ground

A grateful Earnest of eternal Peace

No more with Reason & thyself at strife;

Give anxious Cares & endless Wishes room

But thro' the cool sequester'd Vale of Life

Pursue the silent Tenour of thy Doom.

Themes

Frontispiece to 1753 edition of Elegy by Bentley

Gray's Elegy Written a Country Church-yard is connected to many British poems that contemplate death and sought to make it more familiar and tame. The elegy contemplates the death of the poet and is similar to other works within the British tradition including Jonathan Swift's Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, a comedic version of a eulogy. When compared to other poems within the Graveyard School, such as Blair's The Grave (1743), the poem contains a duller emphasis on common images. His description of the moon, birds, and trees lack the horror found in the other poems and Gray avoids mentioning the word "grave" and instead uses other words as euphemisms.

However, there is a difference in tone between the two versions of the elegy. The early version ends with an emphasis on the narrator joining with the obscure common man while the later version ends with an emphasis on how it is natural for humans to want to be known. The later ending also explores the narrator's own death while the earlier version serves as a Christian consolation regarding death. The first poem is similar to Gray's "Sonnet on the Death of Richard West", his Eton Ode, and his Ode to Adversity in that they contain the same focus on death that was affected by West's death in addition to them being the few early poems composed by Gray in English. The later version of the poem kept the stoic resignation regarding death, as he is still accepting death. The epitaph's conclusion also serves as an appropriate way to conclude the poem based on the philosophy within the poem as the indirect and reticent manner matches Gray's avoidance of spontaneity within the poem. Though the ending would reveal the narrator's repression of feelings surrounding his inevitable fate, the ending is optimistic. The epitaph relies on faith that there is a hope that he cannot see while alive.

In describing the narrator's analysis of his surroundings, Gray employed John Locke's philosophy of the sensations, which argued that the senses were the origin of ideas. The poem's beginning allows the narrator to collect information from the world that would be used to aid in the contemplation found in the later part of the poem. Additionally, the description of death and obscurity adopts Locke's political philosophy as it emphasizes death affecting everyone. The ending of the poem is connected to Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding in that the beginning of the poem dealt with the senses and the ending describes how we are limited in our ability to understand the world. The poem takes the ideas and transforms them into a discussion of blissful ignorance by adopting Locke's resolution to be content with our limited understanding. Unlike Locke, the narrator of the poem knows that he is unable to fathom the universe, but still questions the matter anyway.

When it comes to the difference between the obscure and the renown dead in the poem, scholar David Cecil argued, "Death, he perceives, dwarfs human differences. There is not much to choose between the great and the humble, once they are in the grave. It may be that there never was; it may be that in the obscure graveyard lie persons who but for untoward circumstance would have been as famous as Milton and Hampden." However, death is not completely democratic because "if circumstances prevented them from achieving great fame, circumstances also saved them from committing great crimes. Yet there is a special pathos in these obscure tombs; the crude inscriptions on the clumsy monuments are so poignant a reminder of the vain longing of all men, however humble, to be loved and to be remembered." The poem ends with the narrator turning towards his own fate and he accepts his life and accomplishments. Like many of Gray's poems, the poem incorporates a narrator who is contemplating his position in a transient world that is mysterious and tragic. Although the ramifications of the comparison between the obscure and renown is commonly seen as universal and not within a specific context with a specific political message, there are political ramifications for Gray's choices. The setting, Stoke Poges, was near where both John Milton and John Hampden, both alluded to in the poem, spent time and also a place affected by the English Civil War. The poem's composition could also have been prompted by the entrance of Prince William, Duke of Cumberland into London or by a trial of Jacobite nobility in 1746.

Many scholars, including Lonsdale, believe that the messages are too universalised to require a specific event or place for inspiration, but Gray's letters suggest that there were historical influences in the poem's composition. In particular, it is possible that Gray was interested in debates over the treatment of the poor, and that he supported the political structure of his day, which was to support the working poor but to look down on the poor that refused to work. However, Gray's message is incomplete, because he ignored the history of rebellions or struggles by the poor in English history. The poem ignores many of the political aspects to focus on various comparisons between a rural and urban life in a psychological manner. The argument between living a rural life or urban life allows for Gray to discuss questions that answer how he should live his own life, but the conclusion of the poem does not resolve the debate as the narrator is able to recreate himself in a manner that reconciles both types of life while arguing that poetry is capable of preserving those who have died.

It is probable that Gray wanted to promote the hard work of the poor but to do nothing to change their social position, but Gray's focus is more to accommodate differing political views. This is furthered by the ambiguity in many of the poem's lines, including the statement "Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood" that could be read either as Oliver Cromwell being guiltless for violence during the English Civil War or merely as villagers being compared to the guilty Cromwell. In addition to its messages, its primary message is to promote the idea of "Englishness" and the pastoral English countryside. The earlier version lacks many of the later version's English aspects, especially since Gray later replaced many classical figures with English ones: Cato the Younger by John Hampden, Tully by Milton, and Julius Caesar by Cromwell.

Influence

In choosing an "English" feel to the language and setting, Gray provided a model for later poets wishing to describe England and the English countryside. His choice of language, words, and feelings that connected to rural England served as the model for Oliver Goldsmith's and William Cowper's works during the second half of the 18th century. Beyond his own poetry, Goldsmith would play around with the lines of the poem by removing words to emend what it said.

Gray's Elegy was highly influential and provoked a response from the Romantic poets. When William Wordsworth wrote the preface to Lyrical Ballads he responded to Gray's techniques and responded to the Elegy with his "Intimations of Immortality" ode. As a whole, the Romantics believed that Gray represented the poetic orthodoxy they were rebelling against in that he did not try to overcome death in his poem, but they also used Gray's ideas when attempting to define their own beliefs. Gray also influenced how Wordsworth described his education and the death of his father in The Prelude. As a schoolboy, Percy Bysshe Shelley translated part of the Elegy into Latin and would also visit the churchyard at Stoke Poges. Later in 1815, when Shelley stayed in Lechelade, he visited the churchyard and composed "A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire", which echoes the language of Gray.

Later, Alfred Tennyson adopts many features of the Elegy in his poem In Memoriam. He establishes a ceremonial, almost religious, tone by reusing the idea of the "kneel" and "toll" to mark the coming night. This is followed with the poet narrator looking through letters of his deceased friend that is similar to Gray's narrator reading the tombstones to connect to the deceased. Robert Burns relied on a similar setting to the Elegy in his pastoral poem "Love Among the Ruins", which also describes the desire for glory and how everything ends in death. Burns, unlike Gray, adds a female figure and argues that nothing but love matters.

Critical response

Memorial at Stoke Poges dedicated to the elegy

The immediate response to the final draft version of the poem was positive, and Walpole was very pleased with the poem. During the summer 1750, Gray received so much positive support regarding the poem that he was in dismay but he did not talk about the poem in his letters until the 18 December 1750 letter to Wharton. In the letter, Gray stated,

The Stanza's, which I now enclose to you have had the Misfortune by Mr W:s Fault to be made ... publick, for which they certainly were never meant, but it is too late to complain. they have been so applauded, it is quite a Shame to repeat it. I mean not to be modest; but I mean, it is a shame for those who have said such superlative Things about them, that I can't repeat them. I should have been glad, that you & two or three more People had liked them, which would have satisfied my ambition on this head amply.

From its publication, the poem was praised for its universal aspects and he was one of the most famous 18th-century English poets during his life. However, after his death only his elegy remained popular until 20th-century critics began to re-evaluate his poetry. The 18th-century writer James Beattie was said by Sir William Forbes, 6th Baronet to have written a letter to him claiming, "Of all the English poets of this age, Mr. Gray is most admired, and I think with justice; yet there are comparatively speaking but a few who know of anything of his, but his 'Church-yard Elegy,' which is by no means the best of his works."

Even Samuel Johnson, who knew Gray but did not like his poetry, later praised the poem when he wrote in his Life of Gray that it "abounds with images which find a mirror in every breast; and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas beginning Yet even these bones, are to me original: I have never seen the notions in any other place; yet he that reads them here, persuades himself that he has always felt them". The poem remained popular and, in Canadian historic tradition, it is claimed that the British General James Wolfe read the poem before his British troops arrived at the Plains of Abraham in September 1759 as part of the Seven Years War. After reading the poem, he supposedly said, "Gentlemen, I would rather have written those lines than take Quebec tomorrow."

Adam Smith, in his 21st lecture on rhetoric in 1763, argued that poetry should deal with "A temper of mind that differs very little from the common tranquillity of mind is what we can best enter into, by the perusal of a small piece of a small length [...] an Ode or Elegy in which there is no odds but in the measure which differ little from the common state of mind are what most please us. Such is that on the Church yard, or Eton College by Mr Grey. The Best of Horaces (tho inferior to Mr Greys) are all of this sort." In 1783, John Young claimed, "The Elegy written in a Country Church Yard has become a staple in English poetry. It is even beginning to get into years." After analysing each aspect of the poem, Young concluded by describing how the anthropormorphized "Criticism" would respond to the poem: "In examining the Elegy written in a Country Church-yard, she has found much room for censure, and some room for praise. The Piece has been much over-rated; and many serious persons, who mediate on death from a sense of duty, consider Conscience as concerned in their finding this Meditation perfect. Of perfections no doubt it contains some; but it contains blemishes too; and if Criticism grant it nothing but its merit, what then will be its praise?"

19th-century response

In 1881, Matthew Arnold said, "The Elegy pleased; it could not but please: but Gray's poetry, on the whole, astonished his contemporaries at first more than it pleased them; it was so unfamiliar, so unlike the sort of poetry in vogue."

In 1882, Edmund Gosse analyzed the reception of Gray's poem: "It is curious to reflect upon the modest and careless mode in which that poem was first circulated which was destined to enjoy and to retain a higher reputation in literature than any other English poem perhaps than any other poem of the world written between Milton and Wordsworth." He continued by stressing the widespread nature of the poem: "The fame of the Elegy has spread to all countries and has exercised an influence on all the poetry of Europe from Denmark to Italy from France to Eussia With the exception of certain works of Byron and Shakespeare no English poem has been so widely admired and imitated abroad and after more than a century of existence we find it as fresh as ever when its copies even the most popular of all those of Lamar tine are faded and tarnished." He concluded with a reinforcing claim on the poem's place within English poetry: "It possesses the charm of incomparable felicity of a melody that is not too subtle to charm every ear of a moral persuasiveness that appeals to every generation and of metrical skill that in each line proclaims the master The Elegy may almost be looked upon as the typical piece of English verse our poem of poems not that it is the most brilliant or original or profound lyric in our language but because it combines in more balanced perfection than any other all the qualities that go to the production of a fine poetical effect."

An anonymous review of Gray in the 12 December 1896 The Academy claimed that "Gray's 'Elegy' and Goldsmith's 'Deserted Village' shine forth as the two human poems in a century of artifice."

20th-century response

In 1927, Louis Cazamian claimed that Gray "discovered rhythms, utilized the power of sounds, and even created evocations. The triumph of this sensibility allied to so much art is to be seen in the famous Elegy, which from a somewhat reasoning and moralizing emotion has educed a grave, full, melodiously monotonous song, in which a century weaned from the music of the soul tasted all the sadness of eventide, of death, and of the tender musing upon self." I. A. Richards, following in 1929, declared that the merits of the poem come from its tone: "poetry, which has no other very remarkable qualities, may sometimes take very high rank simply because the poet's attitude to his listeners– in view of what he has to say– is so perfect. Gray and Dryden are notable examples. Gray's Elegy, indeed, might stand as a supreme instance to show how powerful an exquisitely adjusted tone may be. It would be difficult to maintain that the thought in this poem is either striking or original, or that its feeling is exceptional." He continued: "the Elegy may usefully remind us that boldness and originality are not necessities for great poetry. But these thoughts and feelings, in part because of their significance and their nearness to us, are peculiarly difficult to express without faults ... Gray, however, without overstressing any point composes a long address, perfectly accommodating his familiar feelings towards the subject and his awareness of the inevitable triteness of the only possible reflections, to the discriminating attention of his audience. And this is the source of his triumph"

In 1930, William Empson, while praising the form of the poem as universal, argued against the merits of the poem because of its potential political message and claimed that the poem "means, as the context makes clear, is that eighteenth-century England had no scholarship system of carriere ouverte aux talents. This is stated as pathetic, but the reader is put into a mood in which one would not try to alter it ... By comparing the social arrangement to Nature he makes it seem inevitable, which it was not, and gives it a dignity which was undeserved. Furthermore, a gem does not mind being in a cave and a flower prefers not to be piked; we feel that man is like the flower, as short-lived, natural, and valuable, and this tricks us into feeling that he is better off without opportunities." He continued: "the truism of the reflection in the churchyard, the universality and impersonality this gives to the style, claim as if by comparison that we ought to accept the injustice of society as we do the inevitability of death."

In 1947, Cleanth Brooks pointed out that "In Gray's poem, the imagery does seem to be intrinsically poetic; the theme, true; the 'statement,' free from ambiguity, and free from irony." After describing various aspects and complexities within the poem, Brooks provided his view on the poem's conclusion: "the reader may not be altogether convinced, as I am not altogether convinced, that the epitaph with which the poem closes is adequate. But surely its intended function is clear, and it is a necessary function if the poem is to have a structure and is not to be considered merely a loose collection of poetic passages." In 1955, R. W. Ketton-Cremer argued, "At the close of his greatest poem Gray was led to describe, simply and movingly, what sort of man he believed himself to be, how he had fared in his passage through the world, and what he hoped for from eternity." Regarding the status of the poem, Graham Hough in 1953 explained, "no one has ever doubted, but many have been hard put to it to explain in what its greatness consists. It is easy to point out that its thought is commonplace, that its diction and imagery are correct, noble but unoriginal, and to wonder where the immediately recognizable greatness has slipped in."

Frank Brady, in 1965, declared, "Few English poems have been so universally admired as Gray's Elegy, and few interpreted in such widely divergent ways." Patricia Spacks, in 1967, focused on the psychological questions within the poem and claimed that "For these implicit questions the final epitaph provides no adequate answer; perhaps this is one reason why it seems not entirely a satisfactory conclusion to the poem." She continued by praising the poem: "Gray's power as a poet derives largely from his ability to convey the inevitability and inexorability of conflict, conflict by its nature unresolvable." In 1968, Herbert Starr pointed out that the poem was "frequently referred to, with some truth, as the best known poem in the English language." W. K. Wimsatt, in 1970, suggested, "Perhaps we shall be tempted to say only that Gray transcends and outdoes Hammond and Shenstone simply because he writes a more poetic line, richer, fuller, more resonant and memorable in all the ways in which we are acustomed to analyze the poetic quality."

When describing how Gray's Elegy is not a conventional elegy, Eric Smith added in 1977, "Yet, if the poem at so many points fails to follow the conventions, why are we considering it here? the answer is partly that no study of major English elegies could well omit it. But it is also, and more importantly, that in its essentials Gray's Elegy touches this tradition at many points, and consideration of them is of interest to both to appreciation of the poem and to seeing how [...] they become in the later tradition essential points of reference." Also in 1977, Thomas Carper noted, "While Gray was a schoolboy at Eton, his poetry began to show a concern with parental relationships, and with his position among the great and lowly in the world [...] But in the Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard these longstanding and very human concerns have their most affecting expression." In 1978, Howard Weinbrot noted, "With all its long tradition of professional examination the poem remains distant for many readers, as if the criticism could not explain why Johnson thought that "The Church-yard abounds with images that find a mirrour in every mind[...]". He continued by arguing that it is the poem's discussion of morality and death that is the source of the poem's "enduring popularity".

After analyzing the language of the poem, W. Hutchings declared in 1984, "The epitaph, then, is still making us think, still disturbing us, even as it uses the language of conventional Christianity and conventional epitaphs. Gray does not want to round his poem off neatly, because death is an experience of which we cannot be certain, but also because the logic of his syntax demands continuity rather than completion." Also in 1984, Anne Williams claimed, "ever since publication it has been both popular and universally admired. Few readers then or now would dispute Dr. Johnson's appraisal [...] In the twentieth century we have remained eager to praise, yet praise has proved difficult; although tradition and general human experience affirm that the poem is a masterpiece, and although one could hardly wish a single word changed, it seems surprisingly resistant to analysis. It is lucid, and at first appears as seamless and smooth as monumental alabaster."

Harold Bloom, in 1987, claimed, "What moves me most about the superb Elegy is the quality that, following Milton, it shares with so many of the major elegies down to Walt Whitman's [...] Call this quality the pathos of a poetic death-in-life, the fear that one either has lost one's gift before life has ebbed, or that one may lose life before the poetic gift has expressed itself fully. This strong pathos of Gray's Elegy achieves a central position as the antithetial tradition that truly mourns primarily a loss of the self." In 1988, Morris Golden, after describing Gray as a "poet's poet" and places him "within the pantheon of those poets with whom familiarity is inescapable for anyone educated in the English language" declared that in "the 'Elegy Written in a Country Church-yard,' mankind has felt itself to be directly addressed by a very sympathetic, human voice." He later pointed out: "Gray's 'Elegy' was universally admired in his lifetime and has remained continuously the most popular of mid-eighteenth-century English poems; it is, as Gosse has called it, the standard English poem. The reason for this extraordinary unanimity of praise are as varied as the ways in which poetry can appeal. The 'Elegy' is a beautiful technical accomplishment, as can be seen even in such details as the variation of the vowel sounds or the poet's rare discretion in the choice of adjectives and adverbs. Its phrasing is both elegant and memorable, as is evident from the incorporation of much of it into the living language."

Later, Robert Mack, in 2000, explained that "Gray's Elegy is numbered high among the very greatest poems in the English tradition precisely because of its simultaneous accessibility and inscrutability." He continues to claim that the poem "was very soon to transform his life – and to transform or at least profoundly affect the development of lyric poetry in English". While analyzing the use of "death" in 18th-century poetry, David Morris, in 2001, declared the poem as "a monument in this ongoing transformation of death" and that "the poem in its quiet portraits of rural life succeeds in drawing the forgotten dead back into the community of the living." In 2002, Dustin Griffin claimed that the poem was "probably still today the best-known and best-loved poem in English".

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Anonymous (1896), "Academy Portraits: V.--Thomas Gray", The Academy, vol. 50 (July–December 1896), London: Alexander and Shepheard
• Arnold, Matthew (1881), The English Poets, vol. III, London: Macmillan and Co.
• Benedict, Barbara (2001), "Publishing and Reading Poetry", in Sitter, John (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry, Cambridge University Press, pp. 63–82, ISBN 978-0521658850
• Bieri, James (2008), Percy Bysshe Shelley, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Bloom, Harold (1987), "Introduction", in Harold Bloom (ed.), Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, New York: Chelsea House
• Brady, Frank (1987), "Structure and Meaning in Gray's Elegy", in Harold Bloom (ed.), Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, New York: Chelsea House
• Brooks, Cleanth (1947), The Well Wrought Urn, Harcourt, Brace & World
• Carper, Thomas (1987), "Gray's Personal Elegy", in Harold Bloom (ed.), Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, New York:: Chelsea House{{citation}}: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
• Cazamian, Louis (1957), A History of English Literature: Modern Times, Macmillan (New York) (Trans. W. D. MacInnes and Louis Cazamian)
• Cecil, David (1959), "The Poetry of Thomas Gray", in Clifford, James (ed.), Eighteenth Century English Literature, Oxford University Press
• Cohen, Ralph (2001), "The Return to the Ode", in Sitter, John (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry, Cambridge University Press, pp. 203–224, ISBN 978-0521658850
• Colombo, John (1984), Canadian Literary Landmarks, Hounslow Press
• Fulford, Tim (2001), "'Nature' poetry", in Sitter, John (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry, Cambridge University Press, pp. 109–132, ISBN 978-0521658850
• Golden, Morris (1988), Thomas Gray, Boston: Twayne Publishers
• Gosse, Edmund (1918), Gray, London: Macmillan and Co.
• Griffin, Dustin (2002), Patriotism and Poetry in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Cambridge University Press
• Haffenden, John (2005), William Empson: Among the Mandarins, Oxford University Press
• Holmes, Richard (1976), Shelley: The Pursuit, London: Quartet Books
• Hough, Graham (1953), The Romantic Poets, London: Hutchinson's University Library
• Hutchings, W. (1987), "Syntax of Death: Instability in Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", in Harold Bloom (ed.), Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, New York: Chelsea House
• Johnson, Samuel (1979), Johnson on Shakespeare, Orient Longman
• Johnston, Kenneth (2001), The Hidden Wordsworth, New York: Norton
• Ketton-Cremer, R. W. (1955), Thomas Gray, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Lonsdale, Roger (1973), "The Poetry of Thomas Gray: Versions of the Self", Proceedings of the British Academy (59): 105–123
• Mack, Robert (2000), Thomas Gray: A Life, Yale University Press
• Mileur, Jean-Pierre (1987), "Spectators at Our Own Funerals", in Harold Bloom (ed.), Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, New York: Chelsea House
• Morris, David B. (2001), "A Poetry of Absence", in Sitter, John (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry, Cambridge University Press, pp. 225–248, ISBN 978-0521658850
• Nicholls, Norton (editor) (1836), The Works of Thomas Gray, London: William Pickering {{citation}}: |first= has generic name (help)
• Richards, I. A. (1929), Practical Criticism, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner
• Ryals, Clyde de L. (1996), The Life of Robert Browning, Oxford: Blackwell
• Sacks, Peter (1985), The English Elegy, Johns Hopkins University Press
• Sha, Richard (1990), "Gray's Political Elegy: Poetry as the Burial of History", Philological Quarterly (69): 337–357
• Sherbo, Arthur (1975), English Poetic Diction from Chaucer to Wordsworth, Michigan State University Press
• Sitter, John (2001), "Introduction", in Sitter, John (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Poetry, Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–10, ISBN 978-0521658850
• Smith, Adam (1985), Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Indianpolis: Liberty Fund
• Smith, Eric (1987), "Gray: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", in Harold Bloom (ed.), Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, New York: Chelsea House
• Spacks, Patricia (1967), The Poetry of Vision, Harvard University Press
• Starr, Herbert (1968), "Introduction", in Herbert Starr (ed.), Twentieth Century Interpretations of Gray's Elegy, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall
• Williams, Anne (1987), "Elegy into Lyric: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", in Harold Bloom (ed.), Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, New York: Chelsea House
• Williams, Anne (1984), The Prophetic Strain, University of Chicago Press
• Weinbrot, Howard (1987), "Gray's Elegy: A Poem of Moral Choice and Resolution", in Harold Bloom (ed.), Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, New York: Chelsea House
• Wimsatt, W. K. (1970), "Imitations as Freedom", in Reuben Brower (ed.), Forms of Lyric, New York: Columbia University Press
• Young, John (1783), A Criticism on the Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard, London: G. Wilkie

External links

• "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", from The Thomas Gray Archive (University of Oxford)