Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen" is one of the most famous and frequently quoted lines in Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." It expresses one of the poem's major...

By definition, an "elegy" is a serious reflection for the dead. An elegy also tends to be a lament. Gray's elegy is exactly that; however, he isn't lamenting the death of any one, single...

An epitaph is a tribute written to someone dead. The epitaph of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is often taken to refer to Gray himself and what he thinks might be written about him after...

That Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is a powerful and poignant poem is evinced in its immediate success, as well as in the many imitations of this work. In fact, Samuel...

Gray himself is so moved by his thoughts about the simple, unsung people buried in a graveyard next to a rural church that in the poem's epitaph he expresses a feeling of heartfelt identification...

An elegy is a poem lamenting a deceased person or, in some cases, a lost time, place, or item. In the case of Thomas Gray's famous poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," the elegy is...

Neo-classicism was the dominant form in 18th-century English poetry. Such poems, often associated with the work of John Dryden and Alexander Pope, were based on literary models provided by Greece...

"Elegy" comes from the Greek word élegos, meaning "funeral lament." The meaning soon altered so that Latin as well as English elegies, while still poems about death, tend to be melancholic and...

Thomas Gray, in Elegy Written in a Country Courtyard, treats nature with the utmost respect. According to the poem, nature holds all of mankind at the same level. The speaker considers the fact...

In the famous poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," Thomas Gray glorifies common men by making them equal to men who once had possession of power and heraldry. Gray points out that in...

A conventional elegy laments the loss of life, praises the lives of those who have died, and concludes with some form of consolation or acceptance. In "Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard," Gray...

In his "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," Thomas Gray laments the missed opportunities of Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some...

As the title suggests, the tone of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is mournful. An elegy is a work reflecting on a deceased person or some other lost thing. Here, Thomas Gray is elegizing a...

The setting for “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is a graveyard. A churchyard is another term for graveyard, referring to a graveyard that is specifically attached to a church. When the...

As the narrator visits the graveyard of a country church, he muses on the people who lie buried there. He speaks of them as poor, hard working people who have lived and died without wealth or...

While some elements of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray could be considered universal, others are prototypically English. The landscape, farming methods, and church bells...

In the poem 'Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard' the poet Thomas Gray mourns the unremarked passing of the poor. He wonders what gifts and talents they may have had that we'll never know. It is...

"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is a poem written by English poet and scholar Thomas Gray, originally published in 1751. The poem consists of thirty-three stanzas, each of which consists of...

"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" idealizes the common person by exalting the simple, unsung lives of those who occupy graves in the cemetery adjoining a rural church. As the speaker walks...

The famous poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray begins with a moody description of the day fading into darkness. The only sounds are the flight of a beetle and the call of an...

9. Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r 10. The moping owl does to the moon complain 11. Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r, 12. Molest her ancient solitary reign. He is saying it is...

Our response to poetry is subjective and every reader has a different experience. To me, whilst Thomas Gray puts forward the case of the poor in his poem 'Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard' I...

The speaker describes those buried in the churchyard as the poor, who have modest, simple graves. The poor were never able to fulfill their political and artistic potential because they were...

In “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” Thomas Gray reflects for on the people buried in the eponymous rural cemetery. They were farmers and rural workers who spent their days caring for their...

One theme that emerges from "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is the way we remember the dead. The speaker wonders what people will remember him for; he considers that perhaps he will be...

As the poem opens, readers are given several clues that the setting is evening. There is a "curfew," which signals an end point, and it "tolls," or rings, to mark the closing of the day. At this...

In order to fully appreciate the meaning of the thirty-sixth line of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," it is important to take some contextual clues from the previous stanza: Let not...

In the first two stanzas, the speaker notes that the time of day is evening, turning to night. All activity (namely human) is done, and he is alone in the countryside. The air has a "solemn...

In this lengthy poem by Thomas Gray, the reader can find an abundance of poetic sound devices, including rhythm/meter, rhyme, alliteration, assonance, consonance, and onomatopoeia. The poem...

The lines of the fourth stanza highlight, as they are intended to, the sheer ordinariness of the scene. In life, the people to whom Gray devotes his elegy were completely ordinary, everyday folk,...

Broken into stanzas, the description of the scene in the churchyard given in lines 1-20 is as follows. Lines 1-4: the speaker observes the signs of a country day drawing to a close: a curfew bell...

An elegy is a poem written to memorialize the dead. In this elegy, Gray shines a light on the lives the poor, obscure people buried in his country churchyard. He tells the reader not to make fun...

The poem was written in the classical style, but has elements of the Romantic poets who relished in the power of the individual, the beauty of nature, and the supernatural among other things....

An elegy is a mournful, melancholy, or plaintive poem, especially a lament for the dead. Unlike many elegies, however, Thomas Gray's "Elegy in a Country Churchyard" mourns the death of common men,...

This narrator's epitaph, or inscription on a gravestone, is potential, not actual. The speaker is still alive. He writes what he wishes to be carved on his tombstone later, after he dies. The...

In the twenty-second stanza of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," we see Gray reiterate the importance of remembering ordinary people, those “mute, inglorious Miltons” in the churchyard,...

Known for his juxtaposition of established forms and novel sentiments, the energetic poet Thomas Gray combines with great skill the Neoclassical style of his own century with the Romantic ideals of...

The phrase "hoary-headed swain" means a graying or white haired rustic person. In other words, a "swain" is an older and humble individual who does farm work or rural labor for a living. The...

These lines come from stanza 31 in Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." This stanza is part of the poem's epitaph. Epitaphs are words memorializing a person who has died. In this...

In this stanza, the writer of the poem is wondering what would happen if he died. He wonders if he died, if a "Kindred spirit" who also likes to ponder the lives of the dead (as he does)...

In stanza 17 of the poem, Gray writes that greatness was denied to the people buried in the churchyard where he stands. While their humble background prevented them from reaching greatness, it also...

The speaker is the poet himself, Thomas Gray. He is memoralizing the lives of the gone and otherwise forgotten villagers. The isolation of their village,the oppression of the rulers, and their own...

"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." Gray is recounting...

The speaker finds himself in the churchyard at dusk, or in the early evening. We know this because of the words "parting day" in the first line. The third line of the first stanza confirms this by...

All of the things you say are correct, and in Gray's poem. Mainly, first and foremost, it's because they are equal in death: Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault, If Memory o'er...

“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is about human mortality. This refers to the Latin phrase memento mori which means “remember your mortality.” The significance of this phrase, as it relates...