Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

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...

There are numerous figures of speech to be found in Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard." A figure of speech is simply a literary device used to intensify imagery and heighten the...

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...

In “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” Thomas Gray reflects on several different aspects of death. First, he notes the physical finality of it. The people buried in the churchyard will no...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Thomas Gray lived and wrote during the neoclassical era of English literature, the period preceding the Romantic era, but scholars and readers have found certain Romantic elements in Gray's "Elegy...

The speaker in Thomas Gray's "An Ellegy Written in a Country Churchyard" writes of things that will no longer occur for the dead in the churchyard, as well as things the dead will no longer get to...

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...

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...

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...

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...

"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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

A figure of speech is any use of language that goes beyond the literal meaning of words. It can include effects for emphasis, such as repetition or rhyme. Line 10 uses more than one figure of...

I would add to what has been said that it's their bad fortune, but it's also the values that society held up to the Romantic movement. Poor people were "interchangable," without the dignity of the...

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...

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...

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...

In imagining what the humble people buried in the country churchyard might have become had they been given the opportunity, the speaker uses a series of analogies. He begins in general terms; he...

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,...

"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...

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...

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...

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 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 title of this poem establishes the genre: an elegy. Interestingly, though, the person who is being mourned is never directly named. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker is mourning...

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...

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...

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)...

"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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

To have an elegiac tone, it needs to adequately convey a feeling of expressing remorse and sadness for something that is past, or lost. In his poem, Thomas Gray mourns for the lost lives of all of...

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...

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 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,...