Write a critical appreciation of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" by Thomas Gray.

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 Johnson declared Thomas Gray the man who wrote the English poem most loved by "the common reader."

Gray felt that "the language of the age is never the language of poetry." Yet, although he uses archaic diction and distorted syntax at times, Gray's elegy balances Latinate phrases with current English expressions. Moreover, thematically it touches a common humanity that all readers can share. Johnson, who did not care for Gray's poetry, recognized this elegy as one that would last forever:

The churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.

In the neo-classical form of an elegiac poem, Gray expresses his individual estimate of the world using eloquent classical diction. The verses carry a lofty tone and are composed of heroic quatrains (four lines of iambic pentameter with the rhyme scheme abab). The neo-classical use of personification abounds in this formal work, as well, as in the following stanza, which also exemplifies Gray's lofty tone:

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
    Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
    The short and simple annals of the poor.

What lends the poem its beauty and poignancy is the moving expression of thought and emotion that is purely Romantic, as it touches upon Nature and sympathy for the unknown in the graveyard. The idea that 

Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,
     And froze the genial current of the soul

is a poignant one, indeed, as Gray raises the implicit question of social class at a time when ideas of equality were exceptional. Also, the sentiment of remembrance for the "unhonored dead" who have waged battles of their own but their "lot forbade" their renown is brightened by the Romantic notion that Nature and the Eternal provide hope after death, as the soul reposes in "The bosom of His Father and his God."

This line about the bosom of God is the last of the elegy's epitaph. Traditionally, this elegy has begun solemnly with the poet's lament, but ends with an insight that enables the poet to cope with the loss he senses.

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 grave.

Note that the poem is "written in a COUNTRY churchyard." This poem, therefore, is about the deaths of common people, farmers, workers, mothers and fathers:

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

An "elegy" is a poetic lament for the dead, and this poem celebrates the honor of lives that were lived simply, but happily. Just because the people buried in this country churchyard were common people, does not mean that their lives were not important in God's eyes.

As the epitaph on the gravestone says:

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.

Death is a type of rest in which nothing one has accomplished on earth matters. We leave our hopes, our dreams, our "frailties" and our "merits" at the grave as we enter into the "hope and respose" of the Father, God.

What is a critical analysis of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"?

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 ordinary people who are buried in this little graveyard:

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the poor.

For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care: No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share.

"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 title suggests, the poem is an elegy; it was written for a friend and colleague of Gray's, Horace Walpole.

The poem is long and follows a stream-of-consciousness monologue style, but it contains the usual poetic elements and rhythm. Since it is an elegy, the poem is largely a meditation on death and remembrance. Gray shares his perspectives on death—that it is simply a state of being that is part of life and should not be feared.

Gray also concludes that remembering loved ones who have passed away can be painful but also a way to ease grief. This is one of the subtle but fascinating elements of the poem, because the poem itself, an elegy, is supposed to be a form of remembering or celebrating the life of someone who has passed.

This poem is an example of a setting's importance. As the title suggests, Gray wrote the poem in a churchyard, particularly at St. Giles Church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire. The mood and idyllic setting of the churchyard—with its old gravestones and hilly surroundings—provided Gray with vivid details to include in the poem as well as objects to use as metaphors or symbolism.

How is the churchyard described in lines 1-20 of 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 ringing, herd of cattle moving across the pasture, a farm laborer returning home. The speaker is left alone to consider the isolation of the rural scene and carry out a somber tone he has begun in line one.
Lines 5-8:
The somber tone continues: the speaker is not mournful, but contemplative, as he describes the peaceful landscape that surrounds him. He characterizes the air as having a "solemn stillness."
Lines 9-12:
The sound of an owl hooting intrudes upon the evening quiet, which is considered complaining; in this context, the word does not mean "to whine" but "to express sorrow" and is even suggestive of grief.
Lines 13-16:
Here our attention is drawn directly to the graves in the country churchyard and we are presented with two images of death. Line 14 describes the heaps of earth surrounding the graves of "rude Forefathers", and that they are laid in "cells," a term which reminds us of the quiet of a monastery, and that they "sleep."
Lines 17-20:
If the "Forefathers" are sleeping, however, the speaker reminds us they will never again rise from their "beds" to hear the sounds of country life that the living do. The term "lowly beds" describes not only the modest graves in which the forefathers are buried, but the humble conditions that they endured when they were alive.

What scene is depicted in the first 20 lines of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"?

The setting presented in the first twenty lines of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is of a graveyard at twilight.  The scene is set beautifully with the church bell ringing the ending of the day while the cows head home.  Everything is still except for the night life of the insects and owls.  Suddenly, in line 13 and beyond, Gray reveals that this somber beauty is actually contained not just within the churchyard, but within the graveyard for the farmers of the hamlet.  We find that the bell ringing at the beginning of the poem may have been a funeral knell, which leads us into a more somber tone.  Although the swallow continues his song, these people, of course, will not rise.  The poem in itself is a beautiful combination of beauty and sadness.  Gray's poem is truly a perfect example of pre-Romantic poetry.

Can you analyze Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"?

Perhaps the most salient motif of Thomas is the idea of the Latin phrase that Thomas Gray evokes, momento mori; that is, "Remember that you must die."  As Gray ponders this sentiment, observing the modest graves in the "neglected spot," he concludes that in death there is no difference between the renowned and the common people.

In fact, as the poet continues his contemplation of the unknown people in this churchyard, he reflects that

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid/Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;/Hands, that the rod of empire might have swayed/or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page/Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;/Chill Penury repressed their noble rage,/And froze the genial current of the soul.

In other words, beneath these graves there may lie souls far nobler than those of the renowed graves.  Only lack of wealth and opportunity prevented their development.  And, yet, Gray continues, they may be all the nobler for not having reached fame since they lived purer and more honest lives:

Far from the madding crowd's* ignoble strife/Their sober wishes never learned to stray;/Along the cool, sequestered vale of life/They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

In their nobility of soul, then, the common people buried in the graveyard are the equal, if not superior to others. This motif is an inspiring one that the reader can appreciate. At any rate, death, the great equalizer, has come to all.

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*(note)"Far from the madding crowd" is the title of a Thomas Hardy novel. 

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 reality of death.  The opening lines bring to mind the image of something coming to its natural end.  The idea of the random visitor who is able to ponder about the nature of mortality and the lives led by others upon seeing a graveyard is a powerful one.  It is the most natural experience when coming to any such location and Gray identifies on what this resembles in terms of asking questions, postulating about the nature of existence, and wondering about how mortality and life are elements where there are only questions and, few, if any, answers.  The stillness, the end of the day, help to bring to light that when thinking about such issues, all other forms of thought cease as there are no more relevant topics than the one of life and death.  Gray captures the essence of this transferal on the part of the speaker to the lives once led as the graveyard is being studied.  The images of the "busy housewife" or "no children run to lisp their sire's return" help to bring to light the fact that when examining the death of others, human beings have a tendency to transfer their own experiences or hypothesize how their lives might have been.  This helps to bring a universal quality to the poem, for, again, it is quite natural to engage in this type of wonderment as there will be little to prove it being wrong.  Amidst this rumination, there are lines such as "The paths of glory lead but to the grave," helping to cement the idea that what is wondered about from a distance is an end that awaits all human beings, and thus reaffirming the meaning of such a thought process.

Explain the poem "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 poems written by one of the Graveyard Poets.

The poem is a typical elegy poem. Elegy poems were mournful and lamenting (normally used in funerals). The elegy contains three specific elements: lament, praise, and then consolation. The lament section of the poem details the grief the survivor of the lost feels.  The praise section offers praise for the deceased. The consolation section offers closure for the speaker regarding the loss of the loved one they are suffering from.

"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is typical of the 18th century elegy poem (just simply does not follow the sectioning of most elegies). While the beginning of the poem simply describes the surroundings of the speaker, it still details the setting of a mournful and grieving place:

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,

After describing his surroundings, the speaker begins to think about more specific thoughts about the dead- his own.  Here, the poem moves into a more typical aspect seen in elegy poetry. The speaker's thoughts focus on the excesses associated with different things in the world:

Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen

After the excess of the world are examined, the speaker's thoughts move to his own end and how those who have past want to be remembered.

Prior to the epitaph that ends the poem, the speaker describes the grave site of the poet whose tombstone he is standing over and the end of the life of the poet.

Depending on which version of the poem your are reading, there is another stanza which proceeds the epitaph. This stanza discusses the inevitable fate that all mankind will meet: death.

What are possible analysis points of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"?

Well, one place to start would be to consider how this poem presents its main theme, which is that of death. The poem features a narrator, who passes by a churchyard in the countryside and considers the meaning of the corpses buried in this churchyard. The graveyard seems to act as a reminder to the narrator of his own consciousness of mortality. Thus it is that the opening stanzas present a contrast between life and death. Thus it is that the "rude forefathers of the hamlet," "each in their own cell," are compared to various signs of the vigorous life of nature, such as "the moping owl," the swallow and the cock. You will also want to analyse the way that the poem begins by creating a mood enacting the theme of mortality. Consider the opening stanza:

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Note how a depressing, serious and sombre mood is created through the reference to the gradual dimming of the light, the "weary" ploughman "plodding" and the cattle lowing. Symbolically, of course, the end of day could be said to represent the death of man, which makes the setting particularly fitting for the consideration of man's mortality that follows.

Hopefully this introduction will give you a basis on which you can base your further analysis of the poem, as the narrator discusses the dead in the graveyard and considers what he can learn from this visible sign of the impermanence of mankind.