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 laments the wasted lives of the peasants and laborers who are born into poverty, endure hard, limited lives, and finally die, often unremarked. He also praises these peasants as hard-working and noble and as the "forefathers of the hamlet." In these ways, the poem is a rather conventional elegy.

The difference, however, between "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" and other, more conventional elegies, is that "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" arguably does not conclude with consolation or acceptance. In the final stanza, we are left only with the melancholy image of death in the form of a gravestone "beneath yon aged thorn." The "aged thorn" is likely a reference to the "fav'rite tree" referenced in the previous stanza, but as the final image of the poem, it perhaps symbolizes the hard and harsh lives of the aforementioned peasants and laborers. There is no consolation here, just as there is no consolation for those peasants and laborers who are born and die in poverty.