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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
A very subtle question. I would say that it isn't the details, but how they are delivered that idealize the landscape. Line 1: the day is "parting" (not just ending). Line 2: the herd "winds"...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
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...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Gray has been walking through the graveyard of a humble country churchyard and thinking about all the people buried there. They were simple people in their time who never achieved fame or fortune....
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
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...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
There is no shortage of famous alumni from Eton College, as it is one of the oldest and most prestigious institutions in the world. People as well known as Karl Marx, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley,...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The poem is written in the first person, which means that the words that we read come from the speaker. He is standing in an old country churchyard as the sunlight fades and as the plowman plods...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The setting of the poem, in a graveyard, naturally prompts thoughts of death as the great leveler, who renders everyone equal. This theme is expressed eloquently and at some length and is summed up...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
If there is any transgression to speak of in the "Elegy" then it doesn't exactly leap from the page. However, a moderate form of transgression can be observed in the way that Gray modifies the...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Gray's poem focuses on the simple, unknown people buried in a country churchyard. They have never had the opportunity to achieve fame or fortune, but Gray's narrator nevertheless exalts their...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" was a groundbreaking poem for its time (1751), because it cast the lives of simple, obscure country people in positive terms, shining a light on a...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Traditional elegies were composed to commemorate the memories of specific individuals, usually people of high social standing and reputation. In his "Elegy", however, Gray departs from poetic...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The main theme of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is the inevitability of death. This is a poem that expresses the sentiment known as memento mori: a reminder of our own mortality. The...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray is a poem written as an elegy, in terms of concept, but it uses a modern format not usually associated with elegies during Gray's time. As the...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
In the stanza that contains the line you mention, Thomas Grey mentions three people, all of whom are famous Englishmen. He mentions Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, and John Hampden. Hampden is less...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The only poem that I could find which references a country church-yard is Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard". This poem is historically the most famous of the 18th century elegy...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
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...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The first line of "Elegy Written in a Church Courtyard" indicates that it is evening. This is when the curfew tolls the bell (knell) of the parting (sunset) day. The first line of the next stanza...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
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,...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
In Gray's famous "Elegy", the speaker is a dreamer, a man who wishes to live as the rustic souls buried in the churchyard did, "far from the madding crowd." Most of the poem is concerned with...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
There's loads! I've picked out some below-Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise, Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vaultThe...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Although the initial inspiration for Thomas Gray's poem “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” may have been the 1742 death of his friend Richard West, the final version, published in 1751, does...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
With elements of Romanticism in his poem, Thomas Gray's first four stanzas express a communion of nature with the souls of the dead country people. For instance, the words descriptive of nature,...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The poem was Thomas Gray's most influential poem, and has earned him respect as a poet of the time. The poem is relatively simple, describing a country churhyard at sunset, and calling to mind the...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Overall, the images in the first stanza of Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" create a mood of melancholy, tiredness, and finality. There are four main images here, one in each...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
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...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is written from the perspective of a commoner or laborer or farmer. The poem presents a sympathetic/empathetic view of the existence of the...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
There is much in this rather lengthy work that can be appreciated. The structure of heroic quatrains help to emphasize the purpose of the poem as a musing over the existence of life and the...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
One aspect of the poem that relates to people is that it mourns the death of common, ordinary people, idealizing and elevating them. Readers are able to relate to the subjects of the poem because...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
There is a good explanation of this poem right here on eNotes, at the link below. Essentially, the poem can be summed up by the following line (from the poem): The paths of glory lead but to the...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Good question! The short answer is, we don't know for sure, because it is never explicitly stated. The slightly longer answer is, there are some clues in the poem itself we can use to draw...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
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...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Gray does not actually come out and say "here's what's gone forever when you die" but I think that you can determine what he means even so. To me, Gray is saying that the main thing that is gone...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" contains different figures of speech (or poetic/rhetorical devices). Alliteration is found in line six. Alliteration is the repetition of a...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is a poem that is replete with sound devices. ALLITERATION - The repetition of the same or similar consonant sounds in words that are close...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
This long poem, a series of stanzas treating various natural phenomena at their ends, and set in a tranquil twilight setting (itself the ending of the day), memorializes the unheralded,...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
In Thomas Gray's "Elegy" there are numerous features common to the romantic period and romanticism. Firstly is the prevalence of nature and its emphasis as being a place where meditation and deeply...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
A ploughman (in American English "plowman") is someone who directs a plow through a field by leading a horse or other animal attached to it. The exact line from Gray's "Elegy" is: The ploughman...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
In his "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," Thomas Gray employs the neo-classical use of personification in his poem of strict iambic pentameter with eloquent classical diction. There is a...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The four lines of the twenty-third stanza of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" are"On some fond breast the parting soul relies,Some pious drops the closing eye requires;Ev'n...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Although Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is not considered to be part of the Romantic canon, its first twenty lines do advance some classic Romantic themes. Most notably, the...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The speaker in "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is contemplating death. He looks upon the graves in the churchyard and he ruminates on those buried there. It is quite gloomy, a "memento...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
In "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," Thomas Gray's attitude toward death at first is that everyone faces the same end, regardless of their social standing or sense of importance: The paths...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
"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...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
The term elegy has a long history. It originally, in ancient Greece, had two meanings. The first was a sorrowful or mournful poem sung to the accompaniment of aulos (an instrument sounding like a...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
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...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
In language, a concrete term is an event or object which can be physically sensed (e.g., door, purple, loud, sharp, fragrant). The opposite of a concrete term is an abstract term, which is a thing...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
In the seventeenth stanza of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", by Thomas Gray, the lack of fame and opportunity for the poor is seen as both advantage and disadvantage from different...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
A good question. The narrator does reflect on death, and that makes sense. It is logical and natural to think about death at least briefly when you see a cemetery, which the narrator does there in...
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Elegy Written in a Country 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...
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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
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...
