ELEGY WRITTEN IN A

COUNTRY
CHURCHYARD

BY: THOMAS GRAY

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 The Poem’s
Background
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  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 unknown, but it was

partly inspired by Gray’s thoughts following the
death of the poet Richard West in 1742.

*Elegy- a poem or a song that expresses sorrow for someone

who is dead.

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  It was sent to his friend Horace Walpole, who
popularised the poem among London literary
circles.

 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 in Volume IV of Dodsley’s 1755
Compilation of Poetry. Claimed as “probably still
today the best-known and best-loved poem in
English”, the Elegy quickly became popular. It was
translated into many languages, and praised by
critics even after Gray’s other poetry had fallen out
of favour.

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 The
em’s Compositi
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  The poem is an elegy in name but not in form; it
employs a style similar to that of contemporary
odes*, but it embodies 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* buried in the churchyard.

*Odes- a poem in which a person expresses respect for someone or

something.

*Obscure- not well-known; not known to most people.

*Rustics- country people; people who live in the country.

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  Gray's "Elegy" isn't just about death, and it isn't
just doom and gloom. It's about the fear of
being forgotten after you're gone.

 It's a poem that managed to walk that fine line:

with its moving meditations on the value of
human life—even after death—it's both deeply
personal and also universal.

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  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.

 Many of the foreign words Gray adapted were

previously used by Shakespeare or Milton,
securing an “English” tone, and he emphasized
monosyllabic words throughout his elegy to
add a rustic English tone.

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 The Poem’s
Content
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 Holograph of Gray’s
“Stanzas Wrote in a
Country Church-yard”

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  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. (Lines 1-12)

 As the poem continues, the narrator begins to focus

less on the countryside and more on his immediate
surroundings. His descriptions move from
sensations to his own thoughts as he begins to
emphasize what is not present in the scene; he
contrasts an obscure country life with a life that is
remembered. This contemplation provokes the
narrator’s thoughts on the natural process of
wastage and unfulfilled potential. (Lines 53-72)
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  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 death of the first. (Lines
93-100)

 The poem concludes with a description of the

poet’s grave, over which the narrator is
meditating, together with a description of the
end of the poet’s life. (Lines 101-116)

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  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. Circumstance kept the
poet from becoming something greater, and he
was separated from others because he was
unable to join in the common affairs of their
life. (Lines 117-128)

*Epitaph- something written or said in memory of a dead

person especially the words written on a gravestone.

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 The Poem’s
Symbols,
Imagery &
Wordplay
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 Night and Darkness Imagery

•Line 1: The speaker uses personification in the

very first line when he says that the church bell
"tolls the knell" of the day. When a person dies,
you ring a church bell to commemorate their
death, and that's called a "death knell," so the
poet is implying that the bell that rings at
sundown is commemorating the death of the day,
as though the day were a real person.

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 •Lines 5-6: The speaker uses alliteration, or the
repetition of consonant sounds, when he
describes the "solemn stillness" of the scene at
sunset. The repeated S sound (also known as
sibilance) is like a sort of "shushing"—maybe the
speaker wants to emphasize the quiet, calm,
stillness of the atmosphere.

•Lines 13-16: The speaker uses a metaphor when

he says that the dead villagers are only "sleeping"
in the shade of the tree. In fact, this is a
euphemism, or a polite way of describing
something to soften its harsh reality (like saying
that you're "excusing yourself for a moment" at a
fancy dinner, rather than saying "I have to go pee
now").
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 •Lines 53-54: The speaker uses a metaphor
when he describes people whose good
qualities go unrecognized as "gems" that
are hidden in dark caves under the ocean.

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The Poem’s Speaker

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  The speaker of "Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard" is a thoughtful,
pensive guy. He likes to be alone. At
night. In graveyards. So that he can
think about death.

 He wants to make sure that we all remember

the lives of people who lived before us, even
the lives of simple, country folks like the ones
buried in the churchyard where the poem
takes place. He wants to be conscious of the
way that he himself will be remembered after
he's dead and gone, and that means thinking
carefully about how other people see him now.
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 The Poem’s
Title
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  The title of this poem seems pretty
straightforward: it announces the genre of the
poem and the place where it was written. But
let's think a little more about that—an elegy is
a mournful, sad poem, especially one that was
written to mourn for the dead. And it was, in
fact, written (or at least takes place) in a
country churchyard.

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 The Poem’s
Quotes
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  “The paths of glory lead but to the
grave.” (36)

 “Their name, their years, spelt by th’

unletter’d muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:”
(81-82)

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