Elegy Written in A Country Churchyard

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY
CHURCHYARD INTRODUCTION
In A Nutshell
Thomas Gray invariably plays second fiddle to the more famous eighteenth-century
British poet Alexander Pope in the literary history books, which is kind of a bummer,
because Gray was a really interesting guy. Sure, he wrote relatively few poems, and of
those few, most readers and critics agree that "Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard" is far and away the best, but the question is, why did he write so few
poems? What was holding him back? How could the guy who wrote the haunting,
beautiful "Elegy" also write the relatively stilted and formal "Sonnet on the Death of
Richard West" (1775)?
There are so many unanswered questions about Thomas Gray! If Shmoop had a time
machine, we'd want to transport ourselves back to the late 1700s to try to get the
Shmoop scoop on Gray. What made this guy tick?
Here's what we do know: his home life wasn't so great. His father went kinda crazy on
occasion, and abused his mother. Not a very happy environment to grow up in! But
that's the good thing about being a relatively well-to-do young man in the 1700s: you get
sent to boarding school from a very young age, so you get to escape from the yelling
and abuse at home. At Eton, Gray met his BFF, Richard West (whose early death
inspired the poem, "Sonnet on the Death of Richard West") and he also made friends
with Horace Walpole, who grew up to write the totally awesome, completely insane The
Castle of Otranto, the novel that practically launched the literary Gothic movement
(a.k.a. the literary ancestors of modern horror flicks).
But what else do we know about Gray? Not much, reallyhe wrote a lot of letters, but
didn't share much personal gossip. Gray tended to start poems and never finish them,
or else he'd finish them but never publish them. He was offered the prestigious post of
British Poet Laureate in 1757, but he turned it down. It seems as though he might have
lacked confidence in himself as a poet.
He only published the "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" because, after sending a
few copies to his friends for their private enjoyment, some hack publishers got hold of it
and tried to print a knock-off version without his permission. (Copyright laws weren't
very strict in those days, so they'd have gotten away with it.) And yet the "Elegy Written
in a Country Churchyard" is hands-down one of the most beautiful poems written in the
eighteenth century, and it certainly had a major impact on later writers, especially
Romantic-era poets like William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and John Keats,
among others.
The "Elegy" asks us to honor the lives of common, everyday peoplenot just rich,
famous folks. This idea of glorifying mundane, everyday things becomes central to the
philosophies of British Romantics. That's part of why Gray's "Elegy" often gets
interpreted as a kind of turning point from the more formal poetry of the 18th century,
with its emphasis on rich and famous people, to the more loose, free-form poetry of the
Romantics, which focused more on everyday folks.
The "Elegy" was probably inspired in part by Gray's sadness at the death of his friend
Richard West. It's not just about death, but how people are remembered after they're
dead (if that's a theme that interests you, you should check out "Afterwards" by Thomas
Hardy). Gray muses about what happens after people die, and in the final stanzas of the
poem, he admits his own fear of dying. It's a powerful and evocative poem. Even if the
"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" were the only poem Gray ever wrote, Gray
would deserve a place of pride in the literary history books, even alongside heavy hitters
like Alexander Pope.
WHY SHOULD I CARE?

Ever lost somebody that you cared about? No? Well, then you've probably at least
experienced the loss of someone who moved far away. Still no? Well, not to bum you
out, but chances are that you willsomeday. And when that happens, you might
find Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" to be just what the doctor
ordered.
Gray's "Elegy" isn't just about death, and it isn't just doom and gloom. It's about the fear
of being forgotten after you're gone. Gray looks at the graves of common folks, and
instead of just shrugging and figuring that their lives weren't worth remembering, he
takes the time to think about what made them tick. And apparently this poem hit a chord
with the eighteenth-century readers. It has been translated into many different
languages and reprinted many times, and different lines of the poem have been quoted
so often that they almost sound clich now.
So, even if you've never experienced the loss of someone close to you, you should give
the "Elegy" a shot. It's a poem that managed to walk that fine line: with its moving
meditations on the value of human lifeeven after deathit's both deeply personal and
also universal.
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CHURCHYARD: TEXT OF THE
POEM
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The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd 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'ring landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.
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.
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!
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.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault,
If Mem'ry o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some 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 page

Rich 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 ocean bear:
Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
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: nor circumscrib'd alone
Their 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 incense kindled at the Muse's flame.
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,

That teach the rustic moralist to die.
For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind?
On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires.
For thee, who mindful of th' unhonour'd Dead
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,
Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That 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 array
Slow 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 aged thorn."
THE EPITAPH
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A 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.
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CHURCHYARD SUMMARY
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The speaker is hanging out in a churchyard just after the sun goes down. It's dark and a
bit spooky. He looks at the dimly lit gravestones, but none of the grave markers are all
that impressivemost of the people buried here are poor folks from the village, so their
tombstones are just simple, roughly carved stones.
The speaker starts to imagine the kinds of lives these dead guys probably led. Then he
shakes his finger at the reader, and tells us not to get all snobby about the rough
monuments these dead guys have on their tombs, since, really, it doesn't matter what
kind of a tomb you have when you're dead, anyway. And guys, the speaker reminds us,
we're all going to die someday.
But that gets the speaker thinking about his own inevitable death, and he gets a little
freaked out. He imagines that someday in the future, some random guy (a "kindred
spirit") might pass through this same graveyard, just as he was doing today. And that
guy might see the speaker's tombstone, and ask a local villager about it. And then he
imagines what the villager might say about him.
At the end, he imagines that the villager points out the epitaph engraved on the
tombstone, and invites the passerby to read it for himself. So basically, Thomas Gray
writes his own epitaph at the end of this poem.
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STANZA 1 SUMMARY
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Get out the microscope, because were going through

this poem line-by-line.
Lines 1-4
So, right off the bat we have some vocab to sort out in this poem. The "curfew" is a bell
that rings at the end of the day, but a "knell" is a bell that rings when someone dies. So
it's like the "parting day" is actually dying. Sounds like a metaphor!
The mooing herd of cows makes its winding way over the meadow ("lea" = "meadows")
And the tired farmer clomps on home.
Now that the cows and the farmer are out of the picture, the speaker gets everything in
the world to himself (he has to share it with the growing darkness, but that's not so bad).
Notice that the speaker refers to himself in the first person right away in that first stanza:
the parting farmer and cows leave "the world [] to me."
This would be a good time to note that the poet often removes vowels and replaces
them with an apostrophe, like "o'er" instead of "over" in the second line.
If you ever notice an odd-looking word with an apostrophe in it, try replacing the
apostrophe with a letter to make a familiar word. Gray makes these contractions to make
the number of syllables fit theiambic pentameter. While we're talking about form, we'll
also point out the rhyme scheme hereit's ABAB. For more on the poem's meter and
rhyme scheme, check out the "Form and Meter" section.
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STANZA 2 SUMMARY
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Get out the microscope, because were going through this

poem line-by-line.
Lines 5-8
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;
So what's happening, exactly? The "glimm'ring landscape" is fading from the poet's
sight. Must be sunset, but we knew that from the first stanza.
The air is quiet, too, except for the buzz of the occasional beetle and the tinkling bells
hanging around the necks of livestock in their "folds" (a.k.a. barns).
Sounds peaceful and sleepy, like everything is winding down.
There are some interesting literary devices in these lines, too: "solemn stillness" is a
great example of alliteration, and the speakerpersonifies the "tinkling" of the bells when
he says that they're "drowsy." Go to the "Symbols" section for more on these literary
tools!
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STANZA 3 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 9-12
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.
Here are some more exceptions to the overall peace and quiet: the bent-out-of-shape
owl is hooting.
More figurative language here! The speaker uses metaphor to describe the tower where
the owl lives as "ivy-mantled." (A "mantle" is a kind of cloak or coat, so the speaker is
saying that the tower is dressed up in ivy. Cool!)
Because the title of the poem says that it was "written in a country churchyard," we can
guess that the "tower" mentioned here is probably the church tower.
But the speaker doesn't just say that there's an owl hootinghe uses some more
figurative language. He personifies the owl when he says that it's "moping" and
"complaining," since those are things a person would do, not an owl.
And what's the mopey owl complaining about? Apparently, he's complaining that there's
an outsider nearbysomeone who is wandering near her private digs (a "bower" is a
lady's private room) and bothering her solitude.
Who is that outsider? Sounds like the owl is probably complaining about the presence of
the speaker himself! (And we're just assuming the speaker is a "he.")
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STANZA 4 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 13-16
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
This stanza is all one long sentence, and the sentence structure is a bit wacky, so let's
try to sort it out.
The subject and the verb of the sentence are way down there in the last line of the
stanza: "The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."
Hold upthe speaker isn't saying that the ancestors of the town (a "hamlet" is a tiny
town, not an omelet with ham in it!) are impolite. "Rude" is used to describe someone
who was from the country. Someone who wasn't sophisticated, and who was maybe a
bit of a bumpkin. So the forefathers being described here are probably just simple
country folks, not discourteous, impolite jerks.
So what are these country forefathers of the hamlet doing? They're sleeping. Sounds
peaceful, right?
Except, look at the third line of the stanzathey're not sleeping at home in their beds.
They're sleeping in narrow cells, and they're laid in there forever.
Sounds like they're sleeping in only a metaphorical sense. These guys are dead and
lying in their graves in the churchyard!
The first two lines of the poem set the scene. These graves are under elm and yew
trees, and there are piles of turf on each one.
So we're not just hanging out outside of a church as the sun goes down. We're actually
hanging out in the graveyard. Spooky!
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Lines 17-20
The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,
The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
If you hadn't figured it out from the previous stanza, the speaker wants to clarify that the
sleeping guys are not going to wake up. Here's how he explains it:
The first three lines of this stanza list different things that normally would wake a person
up (at least, in the days before alarm clocks and cell phones).
(1) The delicious smells of the breeze first thing in the morning ("incense" is a substance
that you burn to make a room smell good).
(2) Birds twittering and singing in their straw nests.
(3) The rooster's cock-a-doodle-doo ("clarion" = "alarm"), or the echoes of a horn blown
by a hunter or a shepherd.
Having listed all those things in the first three lines, the speaker tells us that none of
those things are going to wake up the dead guys anymore. Okay, speaker!
We get it! They're dead, not just sleeping!
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STANZA 6 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 21-24
Now the speaker is listing the kinds of day-to-day pleasures that these dead guys in the
graveyard aren't going to get to enjoy anymore. So many lists!
(1) No one is burning the hearth fire for them anymore.
(2) No housewife is trying to take care of him after he gets home from work in the
evenings.
(3) No little kids are yelling, "Daddy's home!" when he gets back from work. (A few vocab
clarifications on this one: since little kids don't enunciate clearly, poets used to describe
children's speech as "lisping," and "sire" means "father.")
(4) No little kids climb up onto his lap for kisses that would make their siblings envy
them.
Wow, the speaker is really piling up the reasons it's a total bummer to be dead. Those
poor dead guys in the graveyard! They're really missing out!
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STANZA 6 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 21-24
Now the speaker is listing the kinds of day-to-day pleasures that these dead guys in the
graveyard aren't going to get to enjoy anymore. So many lists!
(1) No one is burning the hearth fire for them anymore.
(2) No housewife is trying to take care of him after he gets home from work in the
evenings.
(3) No little kids are yelling, "Daddy's home!" when he gets back from work. (A few vocab
clarifications on this one: since little kids don't enunciate clearly, poets used to describe
children's speech as "lisping," and "sire" means "father.")
(4) No little kids climb up onto his lap for kisses that would make their siblings envy
them.
Wow, the speaker is really piling up the reasons it's a total bummer to be dead. Those
poor dead guys in the graveyard! They're really missing out!
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Lines 25-28
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield,
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!
Now the speaker imagines the kinds of things these guys did back when they were still
alive.
These are country folks, remember (since they were described as "rude," and since we
know from the title that this is a "countrychurchyard"), so they were farmers.
They often harvested their crops with their sickles (a sickle is a curved knife, like this).
More farmer lingo in this line: the "furrow" is a long, narrow, shallow hole that you drop
seeds into. "Glebe" is an archaic word for farmland. Farmers would cut the furrow into
the glebe using a plough, but if the ground is really hard to break into, you might
describe it as "stubborn." Here's a pic of a plough cutting a furrow.
The speaker imagines that the farmers were cheerful, or jocund, as they drove their
teams of oxen or mules into the field to plough.
The woods bowed to the stroke of their axes as they cleared forests to make their farms.
More personification! Even if you're really handy with an axe, the trees aren't going to
bow down to you out of respect. They're just going to fall over.
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STANZA 8 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 29-32
The short and simple annals of the poor.
More figurative language, y'all! The speaker personifies Ambition and Grandeur in these
lines. You can tell because (a) he capitalizes them, as though they were proper nouns or
names, and also because he says that they're doing stuff ("mocking" and "hearing") that
only people do.
So, what's the deal with that personification? The speaker is telling the readers that they
shouldn't mock the hard work, or the homely, simple pleasures, or the unsung, "obscure"
destinies of the poor farmers in the graveyard. But he doesn't come out and tell the
readers to lay off the mockeryinstead, he says that they shouldn't allow "Ambition" to
mock them. He's sort of displacing the blame. Regular people wouldn't mock these
honest guysonly Ambitionwould be that cruel. Maybe he doesn't want the readers to
feel as though he's shaking a finger at them, even though he kind of is.
Same deal with the second two lines of the stanza: the speaker says that we shouldn't
allow "Grandeur," or high social status, to smile disdainfully or scornfully at the day-today accounts ("annals") of poor people.
Again, though, it seems like the speaker is personifying "Grandeur" to take the edge off
of this stanza so that it won't sound like he's scolding the readers.
(Rule Number 1 of Writing: If you want to earn money from your writing, you probably
shouldn't attack the audience or make them feel bad about themselves.)
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STANZA 9 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 33-36
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Aha. Here's the real reason why the speaker doesn't want proud, ambitious, grand
people to make fun of the poor people in the churchyard: it's because we're all heading
there someday, too!
Here are a few nitty-gritty vocab notes before we start unraveling the sentence structure
of these lines: "Heraldry" is the coat of arms associated with old, aristocratic families.
Families with a coat of arms would embroider it on everything from their servants' coats
to the outside of their carriage to the screen in front of the fireplace. Check out this
example.
"Pomp" means proud, meaningless ceremonybasically, any ceremony designed to

make people feel important but that doesn't really convey any meaning.
Last one: "inevitable" means unavoidable.
Phew. Okay. Now let's get back to the summary! The speaker starts with a list (this guy
seems to be fond of lists). Here we go: 1) Bragging about your family's heraldry, 2) The
empty ceremony of being in a position of power, and 3) The beauty that can be obtained
from wealthall of those things are waiting for the unavoidable, inevitable time.
What time, you ask? Yep, you guessed it: all of those paths lead only to the GRAVE.
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STANZA 10 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 37-40
If Mem'ry o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
The speaker has more advice to proud, rich, hoity-toity people: He addresses them as
"ye proud," and tells them not to blame ("impute [] the fault") these dead poor dead
people if they don't have fancy monuments ("trophies") over their graves.
More personification! Again, it's like the speaker is displacing blame. He says that
"Memory" failed to put up fancy trophies or monuments, but really, wouldn't that be the
responsibility of the families of the dead people? But of course, the dead guys in the
churchyard are mostly poor farmers, so obviously their families wouldn't be able to afford
a fancy marble monument in the church itself. So, the speaker shifts the blame onto the
personified "Memory."
The last two lines of the stanza describe the church itselfthe place where the
monuments might be displayed.
The bell that marks the passing of a member of the church "peals" in praise of his or her
life all through the aisles of the church and up to its high, arched ("vaulted"),
ornamentally carved ("fretted") ceiling.
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STANZA 11 SUMMARY
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Lines 41-44
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
This stanza is a pair of rhetorical questions.
The speaker is still addressing the proud, hoity-toity readersthe ones that, he
imagines, might have mocked the lowly farmers in the churchyard back in stanza 7.
He asks them whether a fancy-schmancy urn (a container to hold a dead person's

remains) or a really life-like bust (a statue of a person's head and shoulders, in this case
to commemorate a dead person) could call the breath back to a dead person and make
him breathe again.
Except he doesn't say so quite that directlyhe uses a metaphor. The dead person's
body is a "mansion," and the speaker personifiesthe urn and the bust, asking if they can
call the dead person's breath back to the mansion of their body. Phew, that's a mouthful!
Second rhetorical question: the speaker asks if the voice of "Honour" (another
personification!) can provoke the silent, dusty remains of a dead person to speak again,
or whether Flattery (another personification!) can make the cold ear of Death (yet
another personification!) feel better about being dead.
(The answer to both of those rhetorical questions, obviously, is "No, of course not!")
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STANZA 12 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 45-48
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.
Now the speaker is reflecting on what type of person might be lying in the unmarked
graves in the churchyard
Maybe, in the churchyard, there lies a person whose heart was once full ("pregnant"
means full, here) of what the speaker calls "celestial fire."
Huh. What could that mean? Sounds like a metaphor to us, since no one's heart is
literally full of fire, celestial or otherwise. "Celestial fire" must be a metaphor for passion.
Maybe, in the churchyard, there lies a person whose hands could have ruled an empire.
Or someone whose hands could have played a lyre (a kind of old-school harp) so well
that the lyre would have become conscious. That's playing a mean lyre!
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STANZA 13 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 49-52
But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Yep, that's another personification in the first linethe capitalized noun probably tipped
you off.
"Knowledge" is the subject of this sentence, but where's the verb? The sentence
structure is wacky. Let's try to untangle it.
Let's seeif we rearrange the sentence so that it's in a more usual structure, here's
what it would look like: "Knowledge ne'er (never) did unroll her ample page, [which is]
rich with the spoils of time, to their eyes."
Okay, now that's starting to make more sense, but there's ametaphor there that needs
more unraveling. Let's check it out.
It's as though Knowledge is a big collection of pages, and, as time goes on, those pages
get filled with more and more informationthat's what the speaker calls the "spoils of
time." ("Spoils" means "plunder" or "loot.")
But these poor guys in the graveyard never had access to all the knowledge history had
to offerthose pages were never "unrolled" "to their eyes."
And why? Because poverty ("penury"= poverty) held back the noble parts of their
characterstheir passion, even their rage.
More personification! "Penury" is being treated like a personit's the thing that
repressed and froze the dead people's potential.
And another metaphor, too: imagine that a person's soul is a river. Well, poverty can
freeze up the current of your soul-river.
This is a bummer, but the speaker might have a point. Let's read on
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STANZA 14 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 53-56
Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Wait, why are we talking about gems and flowers now? Must be more metaphor. Let's
take a closer look:
"Full many" is just an eighteenth-century phrase that means "lots of." So, lots of
beautiful, pure gems are hidden away in dark caves under the ocean.
And lots of flowers come into blushing bloom without a human to see and appreciate
their beauty or their sweet scent.
This stanza is about unsung heroes, like the guys buried in the churchyard without
monuments or "trophies," and both the gems and the flowers are metaphors for people
who do awesome stuff that doesn't get recognized.
Fun fact! These lines get quoted in Emma by Jane Austen, by the irritatingly selfimportant Mrs. Elton. Could be a sign that Austen, like Wordsworth, thought that Gray's
poetry was too formal and stilted, since a character like Mrs. Elton is not exactly known
for her good taste in literature. Of course, we love Thomas Gray, so this is one instance
when we disagree with both Wordsworth and Austen!
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STANZA 15 SUMMARY
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lines 57-60
The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.
The speaker muses that there might be dead people buried here that could have been
famous revolutionaries or poets, but they died unknown and undiscovered.
Maybe there was some village-version of John Hampden who stood up to tyranny on the
village green!
(Historical side note: the real John Hampden was a Puritan politician who opposed the
policies of King Charles I. He refused to pay a tax he thought was unfair. So Gray calls
him "dauntless," or "fearless," for standing up to the "little tyrant," or the king.)
Or maybe there was someone as brilliant as John Milton (you know, the guy who
wrote Paradise Lost), but he died mute, without being able to express his brilliance.
Or maybe there was someone who would have wreaked as much havoc as Cromwell,
but who didn't have a chance.
Another historical note! Oliver Cromwell was the leader of the anti-royalists during the
English Civil War, helped bring about the execution of King Charles I, and became head
of the short-lived English Commonwealth in 1649-1660. He wasn't a popular guy in the
history books at the time Gray was writing.
Another fun fact! Both Hampden and Milton were from the same area of England where
Gray was writing his "Elegy." So maybe Gray liked to imagine that the same area could
have produced other guys who were just as brilliant, but who remained unknown.
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STANZAS 16-17 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 61-65
Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
Their lot forbade: []
We've been going through the poem one stanza at a time, but things get a bit too wacky
here, and here's why: notice how Stanza 16 ends with a comma, and not a period?
Yeah, we did, too. The sentence actually carries over between stanzas! This is
called enjambment, and it can trip you up if you're not careful.
Okay, so if we unravel the weird sentence structure, we can figure out what's going on
here. You actually have to start at the end: The dead villagers in the graveyard are
replaced with the pronoun "Their" in line 65.
The dead villagers' situation, or "lot," kept them from receiving ("commanding") the
applause and approval of politicians.
Their situation also made it impossible for them to blow off threats of pain and ruin.
Nor could they spread good stuff ("plenty") all over the country, even though that would
win them a place in the history books in the eyes of their countrymen.
Nope, the villagers were poor and died unknown because of their poverty, or "penury,"
as the speaker calls it in Stanza 13.
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 65-72
[] nor circumscrib'd alone

Their 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 incense kindled at the Muse's flame.
Again, we have to combine two stanzas because the sentence continues across the
stanza breakmore enjambment!
Not only does the poverty of the villagers prevent ("circumscribe" = prevent) them from
developing the virtues that would get them remembered in the history books, it also
keeps them from committing crimes.
Here are some examples of the crimes these poor villagers just don't have time to
commit, since they're busy working to put food on the table:
They don't have time to wade through blood and gore to kill a king on his throne, or to
act all merciless to people.
Another metaphor there! Slamming the "gates of mercy" is a metaphor for being
merciless. (Try to work that one into everyday conversation. You can tell your athlete
friends to "shut the gates of mercy" on the other team!)
The villager's lot in life keeps them from trying to hide the truth, especially when the truth
is struggling and conscious of BEING the truth.
Their situation likewise keeps them from trying to hide their blushes. After all, a blush
indicates that you're ashamed of something, right? So if you hide your blushes, you're
hiding your true feelings. So this one goes along with the previous line.
"Ingenuous" means innocent.
And there's more metaphor here. You know how when you blush, your face feels hot?
We talk about "quenching" flame, so here, the blush is the metaphorical flame that's
getting "quenched."
The poor villagers also don't have the chance to use fancy and flattering words to build a
metaphorical shrine to the personifiedLuxury and Pride.
The Muses were the goddesses in Greek and Roman mythology who were responsible
for inspiring artists, musicians, and poets. So the "incense" that was lit at the Muse's
flame must be a pen that is metaphorically kindled, lit up, or inspired by the Muses.
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STANZA 19 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 73-76
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
Since the poor villagers who are buried in the churchyard live far away from the noise
and strife of crowded cities, they never learned to stray away from more sober, serious
wishes and desires.
Because they live in a secluded ("sequester'd") area, they were able to live their lives
without making a lot of hubbub or noise.
Fun fact! Thomas Hardy, the English novelist, gives a shout-out to Thomas Gray by
titling one of his novels Far from the Madding Crowd.
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STANZA 20 SUMMARY
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Lines 77-80
Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect,
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
Even though these poor villagers don't have big fancy monuments or "trophies" over
their graves, they at least still have frail, flimsy memorials nearby, if only to protect their
remains from the insult of having people picnic or play cricket on their graves.
These flimsy memorials aren't made out of fancy marblethey just have rough,
shapeless sculptures to ornament ("deck") them, and are decorated with crude, uncouth
poetry.
But even though the memorials aren't all fancy, they still inspire passersby to pause long
enough to sigh. So there!
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STANZA 21 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 81-84
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.
The "frail" monuments (78) are engraved only with the dead people's name and the
years of their birth and death, and even this simple inscription was clearly made by
someone who was largely illiterate, or "unlettered."
The speaker uses irony when he says that inscription was made by a "muse." Since the
muses were goddesses of poetry, how could they be unlettered or illiterate?
These simple inscriptions take the place of fame and fancy elegies (poems written in
memory of dead people).
"She" is the muse referred to in the previous line.
The "unlettered muse" also adds ("strews") the occasional Bible verse ("holy text") that
inspires country folks to think about death so that they'll be prepared when their time
comes.
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STANZA 22 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 85-88
For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing, ling'ring look behind?
After all, the speaker asks, who is going to give up ("resign") their life ("being"), which is
both pleasing and anxious, or to leave the warm environment of the earth, without
looking behind them at what they leave behindespecially someone who, like the
villagers, is going to be forgotten when he or she is dead?
We get another metaphor here in line 85, and some morepersonification, too! Being
forgotten when you're dead is like being hunted down as the "prey" of a predator called
"Forgetfulness." Sounds scary!
Finally, we get more alliteration here, with the repeated beginning L sound in "longing,
ling'ring look."
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STANZA 23 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 89-92
On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires.
Even simple, poor, country folks like the villagers in the churchyard depend on their
loved ones as they die (or as their souls "part" from the world).
They need some pious, religious friend or neighbor to close their eyes for them as they
die.
It's only natural, after allit's the "voice of Nature" (yep, "Nature" isyou guessed it
being personified!).
That voice of Nature calls out from the grave, and the villagers' accustomed passions
(their "wonted fires") live on in their ashes, or their remains.
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Lines 93-100
For thee, who mindful of th' unhonour'd Dead
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,
Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.
Look, gang, more enjambment! The same sentence continues across a stanza break, so
we'll look at both stanzas at once.
The speaker refers to himself in these lineshe's calling himself "thee."
(Fun grammar fact: most modern readers think of "thee" and "thou" as an old-fashioned,
fancy-pants version of "you." But no! It's not fancy-pants at all!
"Thee" and "thou" were actually informal or more intimate versions of "you." Like French,
Spanish, and many other languages that have two versions of "you," English used to
have a formal and an informal way of saying "you." And it makes sense that if the poet is
addressing himself, he'd use the more informal way of doing so.)
Okay, so what's our speaker actually saying to himself? He's saying that he is aware
("mindful") of the dead people who haven't been honored with lots of monuments, so
he's memorializing them in these very lines of poetry.
Then the speaker wonders what would happen if some random kindred spirit, who
happened to be musing on similar things (i.e., death), might ask about the speaker's
fate.
He answers this question in the next stanza, and with somealliteration thrown in while
he's at it ("Haply some hoary-headed" and "swain [] say")!
Probably some gray-haired ("hoary-headed") farmer guy ("swain") would say that they
had often seen the speaker hurrying through the dew-covered grass to watch the sun
come up on the meadow lawn.
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STANZA 26 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 101-104
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
The speaker continues to imagine what the "hoary-headed swain" would say about him,
if a random passerby happened to ask.
He imagines the old guy saying that at noon, the speaker used to stretch out at the foot
of the old beech treethe one that has fantastically weird rootsand that he would
stare at the babbling brook.
"Listless length" in line 103 is another great example of alliteration.
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STANZA 27 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 105-108
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.
This stanza continues with what the speaker imagines an old villager would say about
him after he was dead and gone.
He imagines the old guy saying that the speaker used to rove, or wander, in the nearby
woods.
Sometimes, the speaker would smile almost scornfully, while muttering to himself, and
sometimes he would look all droopy and mopey, pale ("wan") with sorrow, like he was
anxious or else hopelessly in love with someone who didn't love him back. Good times!
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STANZA 28 SUMMARY
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Lines 109-112
"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 speaker continues to imagine what the old villager might say about him after he's
dead and gone:
He imagines the villager saying that he missed seeing the speaker one morning in the
usual place on a local hillside, along the fields ("heath") by the speaker's favorite tree.
(This is probably the beech tree mentioned in Stanza 26.)
The villager goes on to say that another day passed, and yet he still didn't see the
speaker by the brook ("rill") or on the grass, or by the woods. Sounds like something's
up
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STANZA 29 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 113-116
"The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow 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 aged thorn."
The speaker continues to imagine what an old villager would say about him after his
death:
And on the third day after the speaker didn't show up, the old villager says that dirges
(funeral songs) were played, and that they saw the speaker carried slowly along the path
to the church in a funeral procession.
The villager invites the random passerby who asked (the "kindred spirit" of line 96) to
read the epitaph that is engraved on the speaker's tombstone, underneath the gnarly old
thornbush.
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STANZA 30 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 117-120
THE EPITAPH
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.
Now we're supposed to imagine that we, like the "kindred spirit" who asked about the
dead speaker, are reading Thomas Gray's imagined epitaph. Morbid?
Yes. But kind of cool, we have to admit. Let's see what it says
This is where the speaker is resting his head on the ground.
Yes, that's a metaphor! Dead people don't really "rest their heads" anywherethey're
dead, after all. And "Earth" is being personifiedwhen the speaker imagines that it could
have a "lap."
The speaker calls himself a young person who is unknown both to Fortune (i.e., good
luck or wealthit could mean either) and to Fame. In other words, he was of humble
birth.
But at least he was no stranger to knowledge, or science, in spite of his humble origins.
He was a scholar and a poet!
But, alas, he was sometimes kinda depressed.
We get more personification here, tooyou can tell because all those nouns (Fame,
Fortune, Science, Melancholy) are capitalized.
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STANZA 31 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 121-124
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.
He might have had humble beginnings, but he did pretty well for himselfhe was
generous and sincere, and Heaven paid him back (sent a "recompense") for those good
qualities.
The speaker gave everything he had to his depression, or (aspersonified here) Misery
in other words, his tears.
But Heaven gave him something pretty awesome: a friend.
Fun fact: The speaker's probably referring to his BFF, Richard West (see the "In a
Nutshell" section for more on that).
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STANZA 32 SUMMARY
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poem line-by-line.
Lines 125-128
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.
Don't try to find out anything more about the dead speaker's good points.
And don't try to dig up any dirt on his bad points, or frailties, either.
Why not, you ask? Both his good and his bad points are in "repose," or resting, hoping
for eternal life, in heaven with God. That's why not.
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Symbol Analysis
The poem takes place around the time of sunset in a country churchyardalso known
as a cemetery. Kinda spooky, right? And the darkness of the setting is appropriate for
the subject matter, too. The speaker is talkingabout the unknown. He's contemplating
mortality and what happens to people after they die. Of course, no one really knows
what will happen after death, so the darkness might symbolize the mystery of what
happens after we die.
Line 1: The speaker uses personification in the very first line when he says that the
church bell "tolls the knell" of the day. When a person dies, you ring a church bell to
commemorate their death, and that's called a "death knell," so the poet is implying that
the bell that rings at sundown is commemorating the death of the day, as though the day
were a real person.
Lines 5-6: The speaker uses alliteration, or the repetition of consonant sounds, when he
describes the "solemn stillness" of the scene at sunset. The repeated S sound (also
known as sibilance) is like a sort of "shushing"maybe the speaker wants to emphasize
the quiet, calm, stillness of the atmosphere.
Lines 13-16: The speaker uses a metaphor when he says that the dead villagers are
only "sleeping" in the shade of the tree. In fact, this is a euphemism, or a polite way of
describing something to soften its harsh reality (like saying that you're "excusing yourself
for a moment" at a fancy dinner, rather than saying "I have to go pee now"). Why would
Gray use a euphemism here? Could be that part of him is afraid of death and his own
mortality, so he'd rather think of these villagers as merely "sleeping" or resting
comfortably, rather than rotting away underground?
Lines 53-54: The speaker uses a metaphor when he describes people whose good
qualities go unrecognized as "gems" that are hidden in dark caves under the ocean.
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FARMS AND THE COUNTRYSIDE

IMAGERY
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Symbol Analysis
This poem takes place out in the country. In fact, the setting is so important to the poet
that he announces it in the title, just to be sure that you don't miss it! Why would the
country make more sense for the setting of this poem? Well, country folks are generally
seen as simpler than their city counterparts. Since they're farmers, they're more in tune
with the earth and with nature, and more in touch with the things that really matter,
according to the speakerthings like the cycles of life and death.
Line 2: If the title of the poem didn't tip you off right away that we're hanging out in the
country, and not in the city, maybe the mooing herd of cows that appears in line 2 will
convince you. Guys: this is NOT a city poem. Cows!
Line 3: The speaker uses alliteration when he repeats the Pl- sound of "plowman plods"
and the W sound of "weary way." The repetition of those consonant sounds might help
to emphasize how tired the farmer ishe's "plodding" along. It also might emphasize
that the farmers do this every single day. Plod, plod, plod.
Line 25: The speaker personifies the harvest when he says that it "yields" to the farmer's
sickle, the way a beaten warrior would "yield" or surrender to a superior force. (A sickle
is a sharp, curved farm tool used to cut grain. They've been used for so many centuries
and millennia that they often get associated with our ancient, primitive
ancestors. Here's what a sickle looks like.)
Line 29: The speaker personifies "Ambition" when he says that we shouldn't let the
desire to get ahead and get rich keep us from appreciating the useful work of the
farmers.
Lines 101-104: The poet uses alliteration to describe the laziness of stretching out under
a tree near a stream. The repetition of the L sounds ("listless length") and of the B
sounds ("brook that babbles by") sort of imitates the sound of the wind in the tree
overhead and the sound of the flowing stream.
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TREES AND BIRDS
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Symbol Analysis
There are so many different species of tree and bird named in this poem that it's difficult
to list them all. What are all these trees and birds doing in the poem? They're more than
just pretty landscape, that's for sure.
For one thing, they could add to the important natural setting of the poemlike the
farms and countryside, the trees and birds remind us of cycles of life: trees lose their
leaves in the fall and they grow back in the spring. Birds lay eggs and have chicks in the
spring. And in a poem about death and mortality, remembering that leaves do grow
back and new baby birds are born every year is important. Not only might they
represent the cycle of life, but specific types of trees and birds have different traditional
symbolic meanings in Western poetry. Let's look at a few examples
Line 10: Here's our first bird! It's an owl. The speaker personifies the owl when he says
that it's "moping" and "complaining" to the moon. Since owls are nocturnal, they're often
associated with death and with spooky hauntings. How appropriate for a poem about
death that is set in a graveyard!
Line 13: Here are our first trees: elms and yews. Elms tend to be associated with
strength in poetry (which may be why the speaker calls them "rugged"), while yew trees
often represent eternity and immortality. It's not clear whether or not Gray intends to
bring up the traditional poetic symbolism of these trees, but "eternity" sure would be
appropriate, given that his poem is about death and what happens afterwards!
Lines 18-19: More birds! First he imagines a twittering, tweeting swallow, which is often
associated with farms and barns, since that's where they like to build nests. Swallows
are also early risers, like the "cock" or rooster that the speaker imagines crowing in the
following line. These are the birds you hear first thing in the morning. The speaker is
imagining the deaths of the local villagers, so these are the birds that he says they'll
never wake up to hear again.
Line 101: Another treethis time, the speaker is imagining how he'll be remembered
after he dies. He thinks that folks might recall how he used to stretch out lazily under a
beech tree. The beech is traditionally associated with ancient history, the written word,
and knowledge of the past. Sounds like a great tree to associate with a poet, don't you
think? What kind of tree or bird would you associate with yourself? Why?
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ANALYSIS: FORM AND METER
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Elegy in Heroic Quatrains

Okay, we have to hand it to those eighteenth-century poets like Alexander Pope and
Thomas Gray. They sure were into form! Those guys were all about
strict rhyme and meter, and they could really make it work. "Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard" is an elegy, or a mournful poem, and it's written in what we call heroic
quatrains. Huh?
Rhyming on the Regular

Let's translate that:
A heroic quatrain is a four-line stanza written in iambic pentameter with arhyme
scheme of ABAB. Don't worry, we'll translate that further. We'll start with the rhyme
scheme. Check out the first stanza:
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,(A)
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, (B)
The plowman homeward plods his weary way, (A)
And leaves the world to darkness and to me. (B)
The first line rhymes with the third line (as noted by the A), and the second line rhymes
with the fourth line (the B). If you look at each stanza, you'll find that the same pattern is
consistent throughout. And like we said, most eighteenth-century poets didn't play fast
and loose with their formyou'll have a hard time finding exceptions to this pattern!
Really Regular Rhythms Required

Now let's talk about the meter, or the rhythm of stressed and unstressed syllables in
each line. A heroic quatrain, as we said, is written in iambic pentameter. But what's
that? Well, an iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable: da-DUM.
And "pentameter" means that there are five ("penta" = five) iambs in each line: da-DUM,
da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM. Check it out in action. Let's look at that first
stanza again, but we'll highlight the syllables that you'd naturally stress while reading
this out loud:
There are five of those iambs, or da-DUM units, in each line. There you have it: iambic
pentameter. And like the rhyme scheme, you'll find that Gray hardly ever deviates from
his chosen form. He'll even shorten words to make them fitlike the word "over" in line
2, which he contracts to "o'er" to make it a single syllable. You'll notice that kind of
poetic contraction a various points in the poem. Rather than have a messy syllable out
of place, Gray (and other eighteenth-century poets) would just lop off a vowel and stick
in an apostrophe and make a contraction.
Form: Fitting?
It's seems almost contradictory that a poem about the lives of common, everyday
people should be so obsessively concerned with poetic form and meter. After all, the
common villagers that Gray writes about wouldn't give two straws about iambic
pentameter, so why bother with the strict meter? Could be that Gray was trying to
suggest that "heroic" quatrains areabsolutely appropriate for writing about these
common folks. After all, part of the point of his poem is that there could be unsung
heroes buried in this churchyard. Why not use an elevated, fancy poetic form to honor
and glorify them, since they don't have fancy monuments over their graves?
Some readers really dig the strict attention for form and detail in eighteenth-century
poetry, while other readers prefer the more loosey-goosey free-form poetry of the
Romantic-era poets in the early 1800s (poets like John Keats, Samuel Taylor Coleridge,
William Blake, Lord Byron), or the really free-wheeling poetry of the twentieth century
(poets like T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound). What's your preference? Do you appreciate the
skill it took someone like Thomas Gray to write a long poem in a set form? Or do you
think that kind of attention to form limits a poet's ability to express him or herself? (Hint:
there's no right answer here!)
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ANALYSIS: SPEAKER
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The speaker of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is a thoughtful, pensive guy. He

likes to be alone. At night. In graveyards. So that he can think about death. Good times.
But you know the type, right? You might find someone like this speaker in your local
coffee shop, wearing all black and maybe just a tad too much eye makeup, reading
Camus or Sartre and thinking deep, deep thoughts.
But there's more to this speaker than his arguably morbid tendency to hang out in
graveyards. He wants to make sure that we all remember the lives of people who lived
before us, even the lives of simple, country folks like the ones buried in the churchyard
where the poem takes place. He wants to be conscious of the way that he himself will
be remembered after he's dead and gone, and that means thinking carefully about how
other people see him now.
Sure, this might seem morbid, but the speaker seems to want to set himself apart from
the kind of rich, snobby people who just care about erecting huge monuments and
mausoleums in their own honor after they die. Instead, he wants to leave something
less concrete behind him in the memories of the people that he cares about.
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ANALYSIS: SETTING
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Where It All Goes Down

Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" takes placeyou guessed itin a
country churchyard. And that means that it was written among all the gravestones of the
dead members of that church. It's shaded by elm and yew trees, and there's an owl
hooting in the background. Spooky, right?
But it's not supposed to be a spooky poemthis isn't about dead people coming back to
haunt the living, it's about how the living remember the dead. And as the speaker
imagines what these dead people's lives were like, the setting of the poem shiftsthe
speaker imagines their everyday lives in their country cottages. Most of these people
were farmers, so he imagines them plowing their fields, and coming home to their wives
and children at night.
But then the speaker imagines what people will say about him, when he dies, and the
setting of the poem shifts again. Now we're in the shoes of some passerby who
happens to see the name of the poet on a gravestone, and happens to ask someone
what he was like. The speaker imagines that he'll be remembered mostly as a
thoughtful guy who loved nature, who was often seen lost in thought under a tree or by
the creek.
So, in spite of the poem's title, the setting really isn't creepytown. The emphasis is on
the average, everyday, simple "country" part of the setting. There are lots of trees, and
creeks, and farms, and no ghosts in the graveyard at allunless you count the
memories of the past that we all carry with us.
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ANALYSIS: SOUND CHECK
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"Elegy in a Country Churchyard" has a kind of hushed, quiet sound to it, with a
regular rhyme and rhythmalmost like the ticking of a quiet clock. The hush-hush
quality to the poem seems appropriate, given both the subject (death!) and the setting
(a graveyard in a country churchyard!). Let's look at an example in the second stanza:
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds; (5-8)
The repeated S and Z sounds in this stanza represent what's called in the poetry
biz consonance. The effect is a kind of shh-shh, hushing soundalmost as though the
speaker were subtly asking us to lower our voices so that we could hear the wind in the
trees and the call of the owl in the tower. And, of course, so that we can listen to his
poem.
The regularity of the rhythm (check out the "Form and Meter" section for more deets on
that!) helps to remind us of the passage of time, which seems appropriate, since the
poem is about how people are remembered after they die. And the tick-tock-tick-tock
regularity of the poem reminds us that our own lives are passing right now. Tick-tock!
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ANALYSIS: WHAT'S UP WITH

THE TITLE?
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The title of this poem seems pretty straightforward: it announces the genre of
the poem and the place where it was written. But let's think a little more about that
an elegy is a mournful, sad poem, especially one that was written to mourn for the dead.
And it was, in fact, written (or at least takes place) in a country churchyard. But if this is
an elegy, whom is it mourning?
At the start of the poem, the speaker is mourning for the deaths of all the simple country
folks who are buried in the churchyard. And by the end of the poem, he is imagining his
own death. Some critics think that the poemwas inspired by the death of Gray's best
friend, Richard West, although West is never mentioned in this poem. Sowhat do you
think? Is the speaker mourning death, in general? Is he mourning for his friend? Or is he
really just mourning for his own mortality?
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ANALYSIS: CALLING CARD
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Almost Obsessive Attention to Form and Meter
Like many poets of the 1700s (Alexander Pope, we're looking at you), Thomas Gray
was pretty obsessed with the form of the poem. You'll have a hard time finding a place
where he breaks out of his rigid iambic pentameter or ABAB rhyme scheme. In fact, the
Romantic-era poets (William Wordsworth, S.T. Coleridge, and others) were partly
reacting against this kind of poetic strictness when they started writing in a looser, more
free-form style in the early 1800s.
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ANALYSIS: TOUGH-O-METER
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(4) Base Camp

This is a long poem, it's true, but the form is pretty straightforwardfour-line stanzas,
or quatrains and a regular rhyme scheme and meter to go with it. The subject matter is
something that most of us have thought about, toodeath, and how people are
remembered after they've died. But the poem was written way back in 1751over 260
years ago! So the language that Thomas Gray used can be a bit tricky to navigate for
modern readers without your ole' pal Shmoop to guide the way!
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Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge

Gray only published his most famous poem, "An Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard" after some hack publishers got hold of a copy and tried to publish it without
his permission. Good thing for us that they did, or the world might never have seen
this poem! (Source.)
Gray's relationship with his father was so unhappy that when his dad died, Gray didn't
even mention it in any of his letters (at least, none of his letters that were not later
burned or destroyed). (Source.)
Gray's childhood pals included Horace Walpole (who wrote the totally zany Gothic
novel The Castle of Otranto) and Richard West (the son of a British Chancellor). They
gave themselves awesomely dorky nicknames from mythologyGray was
"Orozmades." (Source.)
Thomas Gray was offered the prestigious position of British Poet Laureate, but he
refused it. (Source.)
His life as a college kid at Cambridge was made difficult by all the party boys who lived
near him. They got drunk and made a lot of racket, and on at least a few occasions they
yelled "FIRE!" in the middle of the night to get everyone out of bed (the eighteenthcentury equivalent of pulling the fire alarm). (Source.)
Various famous writers and critics have argued about Gray's use of language since the
time he was writing. Samuel Johnson (yeah, the guy who wrote the first Dictionary of
the English language) once said that Thomas Gray had two languages: a public and a
private language. Poems written in his private language, like the "Elegy," were
considered waaaaay better. William Wordsworth (yeah, the poet who wrote "Tintern
Abbey") said in his "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" that Gray's language was too stilted and
formal, at least in poems like his "Sonnet on the Death of Richard West." Matthew
Arnold (the guy who wrote "Dover Beach") said that because of the time in which he
lived, Gray never spoke at all. That's a lot of different opinions by some otherwise very
reliable writers! (Source.)
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ANALYSIS: ALLUSIONS
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When poets refer to other great works, people, and

events, its usually not accidental. Put on your supersleuth hat and figure out why.
Literary and Philosophical References
Milton" is a reference to John Milton, the seventeenth-century poet who

penned Paradise Lost. (59)
The Musesgoddesses in Greek and Roman mythology who were responsible for
inspiring artists, musicians, and poets. (72, 81)
Historical References
The "village-Hampden" referenced here is John Hampden, a Puritan politician who

opposed the policies of King Charles I. He refused to pay a tax he thought was unfair.
(57)
"Cromwell" is a reference to Oliver Cromwell, the guy who ruled Britain after leading the
anti-Royalists in the Civil War and bringing about the execution of King Charles I.
Cromwell was the head of the short-lived English Commonwealth in 1649-1660. (60)
Pop Culture References

No references to popular culture in this poem, but there are some famous references to
this poem in later literature! Thomas Hardy clearly loved this poemhe picks up some
of the same ideas and themes in his poem, "Afterwards," and he uses a line of the
poem to title his novel, Far From the Madding Crowd. Jane Austen has the irritatingly
stuck-up Mrs. Elton quote from this poem in her novel Emma, and William Wordsworth
uses Thomas Gray as an example of what NOT to do as a poet in his "Preface to Lyrical
Ballads."
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CHURCHYARD THEME OF
DEATH
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Well, Shmoopers, you probably saw this one coming: "Elegy Written in a Country
Churchyard" is a poem that takes place in a cemetery, and it's about how people are
remembered after they're dead. So you better believe that death is an important theme!
But if this theme gets you down, don't worrythe poem isn't all doom and gloom, and
there are plenty of otherthemes to consider in relationship to this central focus on death.
Questions About Death

1. What elements of the poem's setting or its opening images tip you off that it's going to be
about death and mortality? How do you know?
2. At what point the poem do you think the speaker shifts from thinking about the deaths of
the villagers in the churchyard to thinking about his own eventual death? Or do you think
he's really just musing about his own death the whole time? Why do you think so?
3. The poem is called an "elegy," or a mournful poem written in someone's memory. Is it an
elegy written about the deaths of the villagers, or about the speaker's own death? Or
about death in general? How do you know?
Chew on This
Try on an opinion or two, start a debate, or play the devils advocate.
Glass half full alert! The presence of so many birds, trees, and other natural elements
suggests that death is relieved by the possibility of renewal and new life.
This isn't about the simply country folk. Nope, the poem exists for the speaker to mourn
the inevitability of his own death.
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CHURCHYARD THEME OF
MEMORY AND THE PAST
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Okay, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" isn't just about death. We promised
some less-depressing themes, and this is one of them: the poem is about how we're
remembered after we're gone. That's not so bad, is it? What's that? Still don't like
thinking about the whole "after you're gone" part? Well, finethis one's a bit
depressing, too.
Questions About Memory and the Past

1. When the speaker starts thinking about his own death, why does he imagine what a
random villager will say about him (95-116)? Why doesn't he tell us about his own life in
his own words?
2. Why doesn't the speaker think that it's a good idea to put up monuments to
commemorate the dead? Don't fancy statues and monuments help us remember the
past? What does he want us to do instead?
3. The poet seems to want to be remembered as a nature loversomeone who hangs out
under trees listening to babbling brooksrather than as a great poet. Why is that, do
you think? Does being a nature lover have anything to do with being a poet? Why or why
not?
4. How would you want to be remembered after you're gone? Try imagining what a
neighbor or classmate would say about you after you die (or move away or graduate, if
that's too depressing). Bonus points if you write it in heroic quatrains!
Chew on This
Statues shmatues! In this poem, the speaker wants to emphasize the importance of
lives that are not commemorated by monuments or remembered by official history: the
lives of common people that could potentially have been Miltons or Cromwells, if only
they had been recognized and remembered.
Thomas Gray suggests that death is democratizingit strikes down rich people as well
as poor peoplebut he goes further to suggest that we might be remembering the
wrong people for the wrong things. Food for thought, gang.
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CHURCHYARD THEME OF MAN
AND THE NATURAL WORLD
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If you're all depressed from reading about death and mortality in Gray's "Elegy Written
in a Country Churchyard," not to worry. There are plenty of natural images to counteract
all of that doom and gloom. For Gray, the natural world seemed to have provided a
source of hope and renewal. All of the natural stuff, after all, goes through cycles of
death and decay and new life. Maybe he was hoping that human life would do the
same?
Questions About Man and the Natural World

1. Are the villagers able to appreciate nature the way that the speaker does? Why or why
not? Does it take a poetsomeone whose "heart is pregnant with celestial fire" (46)to
appreciate nature? Why do you think so?
2. Why might the speaker hope to be remembered as someone who cared about nature
someone who relaxed under trees and listened to the brook (101-104)instead of as a
great poet?
3. Why do you think the speaker uses so many images of birds and trees? What's the
effect on your reading?
4. How might the poem be different if it were set in a city churchyard?
Chew on This
Yay, nature! For Gray, nature and natural images represent cycles of death and renewal
that provide a source of hope in the face of the inevitability of death and decay.
The speaker evokes images of primitive, primeval nature to make the villagers seem
more in touch with the cycles of life and death than typical city-dwellers. What do those
guys know, anyway?
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CHURCHYARD THEME OF
SOCIETY AND CLASS
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Sure, you can sum up Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" as apoem about
death and mortality, but there's a lot more to it if you look under the surface. Beneath all
that stuff about death are questions about how it's best to remember the dead, and the
implicit question there has to do with social class. After all, poor people don't have time
to write fancy biographies of their lives or contemplate their own death and mortalityall
they have time to do is work to stay alive and support their families. Nor do they have
time or money to put up fancy monuments over their graves. Does this mean that their
lives had less dignity or are less worthy of being remembered?
Questions About Society and Class

1. Who do you think is the intended audience of this poem? Rich people? Poor people?
The middle class? Women? Men? Why do you think so?
2. Why does the speaker think that rich people (the "proud" of line 37) would blame the
villagers for not having monuments over their graves? Does he really expect the rich to
look down their noses at poor people's graves? Or is he really just addressing anyone in
his audience who might dismiss the graves of the poor as being insignificant?
3. Why does the speaker bring up historical figures (John Hampden, John Milton, and
Oliver Cromwell in lines 57-64)?
4. In a poem ostensibly about death (it is, after all, titled an "elegy," or apoem of mourning),
why might Gray choose to bring up the theme of society and social class at all? Does
this distract the reader from Gray's larger points about mortality? Why or why not?
Chew on This
In Gray's "Elegy," death is a democratizing force: it strikes down both the rich and the
poor, so there's no point in erecting monuments to commemorate anyone. Death is a
great equalizer!
By bringing up historical figures like John Hampden, John Milton, and Oliver Cromwell,
Gray suggests that poor people have as much potential to do great things as rich
people, but their circumstances keep them from fulfilling their potential. Bummer.
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CHURCHYARD THEME OF
ISOLATION
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The speaker of Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" sure is excited to be left
alone in a dark churchyard after the sun goes down. What's up with that? This guy
might just like his solitude, but we're guessing that there's more to it than that.
Questions About Isolation

1. Why is the speaker so pleased to be left by himself in the "darkness" of the churchyard
in the first stanza?
2. How might the poem be different if the speaker had an interlocutorin other words, if
there were someone physically present in the churchyard with him to listen to and share
his musings? How important is his solitude to the feel and meaning of the poem?
3. The speaker imagines how he'll be remembered after he's gone in the final stanzas of
the poem. He doesn't imagine being mourned or missed by any family or friendshe
imagines what a total stranger will say about him. What's the effect of that choice on
your reading? Does the speaker have no friends, or are they just not important to what
he's trying to do here?
Chew on This
The speaker emphasizes the solitude of each individual villager in his "cell"-like grave
(15). Since death isolates us all, it seems appropriate that the speaker should be
completely alone during his musings about death and mortality. Talk about a downer!
Because the speaker is contemplating the lives and deaths of complete strangers, it
makes sense that he should imagine how his own death would be remembered by
strangers, as opposed to by his own friends and family. Grim, but appropriate!
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CHURCHYARDDEATH QUOTES
See more famous quotes from poetry
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How we cite our quotes: (Line)

Quote #1
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, (1)

The theme of mortality appears right from the first line, with the metaphor of the church
bell ringing a "knell" for the end of the day. Since a "knell" is a bell toll for a person who
has died, the speaker is personifying the day, and is also making death into a kind of
universalit's not just people who die, but even each day dies at sunset! Fortunately,
the sun comes up again in the morning, so maybe there's a hint of hope here?
Death
Quote #2

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. (15-16)
The speaker is using a euphemism to describe death herehe says that the dead
villagers are just "sleeping." That also sounds hopeful, since after all, if you fall asleep,
you're going to wake up again, eventually. Hey, maybe this death thing isn't so bad after
all!
Death
Quote #3

No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed. (19-20)
Oh no, wait! These guys aren't just sleeping, after allthey're never going to get woken
up by the rooster crowing again. So much for that hopeful idea. This poem just took a
turn for the depressing.
Death
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Quote #4
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, (25)

Sure, this line might sound like it's just about farmers harvesting their grain, but did you
ever stop and think about what the Grim Reaper (a.k.a. the personification of Death in
some Western cultures) is up to? Check out this image. That scythe that the Grim
Reaper is holding is also a farm implement, intended foryou guessed itharvesting

the souls of dead people. So it's possible that the sickle these farmers are using is
intended to make us think of the grim reaper harvesting souls. Hmm. Sounds a bit
morbid, doesn't it?
Death
Quote #5
The paths of glory lead but to the grave. (36)

The speaker wants us to remember that everyone dies. EVERYONE. And all of your
worldly ambitionscollege, a great career, whatever your "paths of glory" might be
only end in one place: death. Sorry to rain on your parade!
Death
Quote #6

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath? (41-42)
Here the speaker warns against putting too much emphasis on monuments and fancy
mausoleums to commemorate yourself or a loved one after death. After all, no fancyschmancy statue or "urn" is going to bring you back from the dead.
Death
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CHURCHYARD MEMORY AND
THE PAST QUOTES
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Quote #1

Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share. (21-24)
These are the lines where the speaker starts to imagine what the lives of the dead
villagers were really like. They don't have fancy monuments over their graves, and no
one wrote the story of their lives, so it's up to him to imagine what their past was really
like. And it's a pretty cozy, homely image: nice fire in the fireplace, a wife there to fix
supper, kids climbing into his lap when he gets home from work to get cuddled. But of
course, this is all the speaker's imagination. Is this memory legit, do you think? Is it fair
to project this kind of memory onto total strangers? Or is it a way of honoring them in
spite of the fact that there is no record of their lives?
Memory and the Past
Quote #2

If Mem'ry o'er their tomb no trophies raise, (37-38)
The speaker wants to make sure that proud, snotty people don't turn up their noses at
the poor folks from the village who couldn't afford to put up fancy monuments over their
loved ones' graves. In fact, he personifies "Memory" here, saying that it was "Memory"
that didn't put up the monuments, or "trophies." It's like he's trying to displace the blame.
Memory and the Past
Quote #3

Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death? (43-44)
The speaker reminds us that no amount of honor or monuments in tribute to the dead
are going to bring people back from the grave. So what's the point of memorials, then,
according to the speaker? Is there a point? What kind of memorial would work?
Memory and the Past
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Quote #4

Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire; (45-46)
The speaker imagines more about what the lives of the villagers were really like.
Maybejust maybethere was a poet (someone whose heart was filled with "celestial
fire") who lived here who just never had a chance to publish his or her work, and so we
have no record of them. This kind of memory is purely hypothetical, of courseit's all a
big "what if."
Memory and the Past
Quote #5

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood. (59-60)
Another hypothetical: what if a poet as awesome as John Milton (who wrote Paradise
Lost) had lived and died here, totally unknown and undiscovered? What if someone with
the passion and ambition of Oliver Cromwell (the guy who ran the English
Commonwealth after the assassination of King Charles I) lived and died here, but never
had a chance to fulfill his ambitions?
Memory and the Past
Quote #6

The place of fame and elegy supply: (81-82)
Instead of a fancy monument or a literary biography, all these dead villagers get is a
simple tombstonebadly speltwith their names and the years that they lived and
died. According to the speaker, does this mean that we should forget about them?
Memory and the Past
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CHURCHYARD MAN AND THE
NATURAL WORLD QUOTES
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Quote #1

And leaves the world to darkness and to me. (3-4)
The relationship of man and the natural world is brought up in the first stanza. The
speaker watches a farmer go wearily home from the fields. That right there is one way
to have a relationship with the natural worldwork on a farm! You'll be in close touch
with the earth, all right. But the speaker has a different type of relationship with the
earth. He's pleased to be left alone, in the dark, with the natural world around him.
Man and the Natural World
Quote #2

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight, (6-7)
All the repeated S and Z sounds in these lines mimic the "buzzzzzzzzz" sound of the
beetle "droning" along. The speaker sure has a good ear for nature.
Quote #3

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. (13-16)
It seems important to the speaker that the dead villagers are resting in a very natural
settingthey're under elms and yew trees, under piles of turf. They're not in some
musty churchyard or buried under stone monuments; they're one with nature. This
seems to be the ideal way to spend eternity, at least from the speaker's point of view.
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Quote #4

How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke! (27-28)
The speaker imagines how the villagers worked in the natural setting of their farms and
village. They were cheerful and strong! And the wood that they chopped for fuel or for
building supplies seemed to acknowledge the superior strength of the villagers: it
"bow'd" before them.
Quote #5

And pore upon the brook that babbles by. (101-104)
Toward the end of the poem, we get to hear more about the speaker's relationship with
nature. He wants to be remembered as the kind of guy who used to stretch out lazily
under a tree and listen to the babbling brook nearby. Why might he want to be
remembered this way? The villagers' relationship with the natural world always seems
to have to do with workthey plow the fields and work with their livestock and chop
wood for fuel. The speaker, meanwhile, gets to nap under a tree. What's up with that?
Does thepoem seem to privilege one kind of relationship with nature over the other?
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CHURCHYARD SOCIETY AND
CLASS QUOTES
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Quote #1

The short and simple annals of the poor. (29-32)
The speaker seems to expect the readerat least, rich, snooty readersto look down
their noses at the lives of the poor because they didn't accomplish anything worthy of
being recorded in the history books.
Society and Class
Quote #2

And waste its sweetness on the desert air. (55-56)
The speaker uses a metaphor, though, to point out that some of the poor people buried
here might have been worthy of being recorded in history books, but never had the
opportunity. They wasted their lives in the "desert air" of their tiny village and were
never recognized by the wider world.
Society and Class

Quote #3

The little tyrant of his fields withstood; (57-58)
There could have been someone like John Hampden, a man who stood up to the
tyranny of the king, living in this village, only no one ever wrote down what he did. Does
that make his accomplishments any less valid or legit?
Society and Class
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Quote #4

Their lot forbade: (63-65)
The speaker points out that the villagers' situation (their "lot") kept them from making a
big splash in the history books. After all, they were pretty busy just keeping food on the
table!
Society and Class
Quote #5

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. (75-76)
The villagers had to live their lives in the seclusion of the villageoutside of the national
spotlight. They didn't make a lot of "noise," in that they didn't do anything that got
recorded in the history books, but that doesn't mean that we should just
forget aboutthem.
Society and Class
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CHURCHYARD ISOLATION
QUOTES
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Quote #1

And leaves the world to darkness and to me. (3-4)
The speaker isolates himself from the very first stanza. He watches the last people still
out and aboutthe "plowman" who was working in the fieldsmake their way home,
and enjoys the feeling of solitude in the churchyard. He also seems to feel a sense of
possession of the churchyard. Now that he's alone, he says that it has been left "to
him." What's up with that, do you think?
Isolation
Quote #2

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, (13-15)
The speaker makes a point of telling us that each individual dead villager is completely
and totally alone in his grave. He goes so far as to call each grave a "cell," as though
the dead villagers are prisoners in isolated prison cells or monks in solitary monastery
cells. Death is isolating; everyone dies alonewe've all heard the clichs. But
remember: they weren't yet clichs at the time Gray was writing!
Isolation
Quote #3

Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray; (73-74)
The villagers described in the poem lived their whole lives in relative isolation. They
lived far away from the noisy, "madding" crowds of cities like London. They spent their
entire lives among a relatively small number of people. Does this mean that they were
more prepared for the isolation of the grave than people who live in cities who are used
to noise and crowds?
Isolation
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Quote #4

They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. (75-76)
Again, the villagers are described as "sequester'd," or protected from the outside world.
Their town is insulated from the noise and bustle of modern life.
Isolation
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CHURCHYARD QUESTIONS
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Bring on the tough stuff - theres not just one right answer.
1. What do you think prompts the speaker to start thinking about his own death? For the
first twenty or so stanzas, he's cheerfully thinking about the dead villagers. What shifts,
and why?
2. Why do you think Gray uses so much personification? Why, for example, does he say
"Let not Ambition mock their useful toil" in line 29, instead of, "Hey, ambitious people,
don't make fun of these guys"? What's the effect on your reading?
3. In his Preface to Lyrical Ballads (which you can access here), William Wordsworth
famously used Thomas Gray as an example of what poets should not do. He said that
Gray used too much of what he called "unnatural" languagetoo many metaphors, too
many personifications. Wordsworth argued that regular people didn't really talk like that,
so poets shouldn't, either. Do you agree with Wordsworth? Why or why not? See if you
can use examples from the poem to explain your answer.
4. Who do you think is the intended audience of this poem? Men, women? Rich people,
poor people? Young or old? Why do you think so?
5. If this is an "Elegy," or a poem of mourning, who or what is it mourning? How do you
know?
6. Why do you think Gray insisted so much on the fact that it's acountry churchyard? Would
the poem be different if it were set in a city? How so?
7. What do you imagine people will say about you after you're dead? What would you like
them to say? If you could write your own epitaph, as Gray does in this poem, what would
it say?
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Elegy Written in A Country Churchyard

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