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 that cannot be physically sensed (e.g., happiness, friendship, success, danger, morality).
Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is full of concrete terms, which he weaves together to conjure the mood of being in a small village churchyard as twilight falls. I've bolded them here for your reference and added a bit of discussion.
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,The lowingherd wind slowly o'er the lea,The plowman homeward plods his weary way,And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
Now fades the glimm'ringlandscape on the sight, And all the air a solemn stillness holds, Save where the beetle wheels his droning...
Unlock This Answer Now
Start your 48-hour free trial and get ahead in class. Boost your grades with access to expert answers and top-tier study guides. Thousands of students are already mastering their assignments—don't miss out. Cancel anytime.
Already a member? Log in here.
flight, And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r The moping owl does to the mooncomplain Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r, Molest her ancient solitary reign.
The poem opens with the sound of a curfew bell, the mooing of cows in a meadow, the figure of a tired farmer walking home, and the landscape settling into darkness. The light is fading and everything is quiet, except for the sound of a few insects and the far-off sound of water. An owl hoots at the moon from the church tower.
Having set the scene, Gray turns his attention to the inhabitants of the
churchyard:
Here, under the trees, lie the bones of the "forefathers" of the village, men who will never again wake to the feeling of dawn breezes, or the sounds of birdsong and roosters crowing. They will never feel the warmth of a fireside or enjoy the company of their wife and children. And yet, these men were vital once, scything the wheatfields, ploughing the earth, driving their teams of oxen and horses, cutting down trees:Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
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.
Gray has used concrete terms to evoke the reality of these villagers' lives, as well as the reality of their final resting place. He enables the reader to see, hear, and feel this country churchyard and to imagine what life was like for the people buried there. He does this so that his readers will sympathize with the villagers, and feel their presence. They may have lived humbly, they may have died long ago, but they were real people: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!
The poem goes on to say that many of these villagers might have been kings, heroes, poets, and geniuses, but their Fate was to live and die in peaceful obscurity. They might have burned with ambition and brilliance but never had the opportunity to express either:Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smileThe short and simple annals of the poor.
Gray muses about the kinds of people that might lie buried in this country churchyard:Perhaps in this neglected spot is laidSome heart once pregnant with celestial fire;Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample pageRich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,The dark unfathom'd caves of oceanbear:Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
When comparing them to great men of history, Gray admits these villagers are "mute" and "noiseless." However, if they were never able to earn any glory, neither were they able to inflict any pain:Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breastThe little tyrant of his fieldswithstood;Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,Some Cromwell guiltless of his country'sblood.
Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,The threats of pain and ruin to despise,To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes,
Their lot forbade [...]
Gray closes by imagining the life of a single villager, a moody young man who liked to walk up the hillside in the morning and stretch out under an old beech tree by a stream, listening to the water flowing past.
[Fate] nor circumscrib'd aloneTheir growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd;Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,
The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incensekindled at the Muse's flame.
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the coolsequester'dvale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Gray imagines his young man died unexpectedly, to the sorrow of his fellow villagers, and was buried in this churchyard by his friends. He imagines some older villager inviting Gray to read the young man's epitaph inscribed on the headstone beneath an old hawthorn tree:"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawnBrushing with hasty steps the dews awayTo meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
"There at the foot of yonder nodding beechThat wreathes its old fantastic roots so high,His listless length at noontide would he stretch,And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would rove,Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love."
"One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,Along the heath and near his fav'rite tree;Another came; nor yet beside the rill,Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;
"The next with dirges due in sad arraySlow thro' the church-way path we saw him borne.Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay,Grav'd on the stone beneath yon agedthorn."
Gray closes by imagining the inscription someone like this young man would have, acknowledging that he may not have been important in the grand scheme of things, but nonetheless, he was loved, and he is missed.
Here rests his head upon the lap of EarthA youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.
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.