Elegy by Thomas Gray

Elegy Written in a Country Chrchyard

Thomas Gray’s Elegy laments the death of life in general while mourning long gone ancestors and exhibiting the transition made by the speaker, from grief and mourning to acceptance and hope. It was written in 1742 and revised to its published form in 1746, and is one of the three highlights of the elegiac form in English literature, the others being Milton’s “Lycidas” and Tennyson’s In Memoriam. It was first published, anonymously, in 1751, under the title "An Elegy wrote in a Country Churchyard." Although believed to be started in 1742 the exact date of composition of the Elegy, apart from the concluding stanzas, cannot be exactly determined. The Elegy was concluded at Stoke Poges in June, 1750, where Gray was buried. The churchyard as described by Gray is typical rather than particular; of the five disputed "originals" Stoke Poges bears the least resemblance to the graveyard in the Elegy.

The poem starts off dark and dreary often rousing images of death. The first four stanzas establish the time and setting of the poem. There was a curfew around the time that this was written and the first line supports this. It was wrung at eight o’clock as a signal for extinguishing fires and marked the end of the day. The first stanza also includes a “plowman”(line 3) who, after a hard day , is on his way

home. There is a “solemn stillness”(line6) which also suggests twilight or some time in the evening. Line 15 places the speaker in the poem in a graveyard. “Each in his narrow cell forever laid” describes people resting eternally in their narrow cells, which are usually associated with coffins or the narrow graves that they were placed into.

The speaker of the poem then goes on to ta...

... middle of paper ...

... the gravestone.

By the end of the Elegy the speaker learns to accept his loss. The realisation that life goes on and that the memory of his friend will live on, just as his will live on, helps to cope with the loss. Gray started the Elegy by presenting the reader with a dilemma. In this case that dilemma was How do I cope with my loss? By the end of the Elegy that dilemma was answered. The answer was that his friend will live on in his heart and later in his remains as supported by line 92: “...in our Ashes live their...fires”.

Bibliography:

Works Cited

1.Starr, Herbert W., ed. Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Columbus, Ohio: Charles E. Merril Pub. Co., 1968

2.Young, Robyn L., ed. Poetry Criticism, vol. 2. Detroit, 1991

3.Magill, Frank N., ed. Critical Survey of Poetry, English Language Series. California, 1992