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Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

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, really—he 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 people—not 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 will—someday. 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 cliché 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 life—even after death—it's both deeply personal and also universal. 

Allusions & Cultural References

When poets refer to other great works, people, and events, it’s usually not accidental. Put on your super-sleuth 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 Muses—goddesses 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 poem—he 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."

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard: Rhyme, Form & Meter

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 a rhyme 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 form—you'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:
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.
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 fit—like 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 are absolutely 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!)

Speaker Point of View

Who is the speaker, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?

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.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard Setting

Where It All Goes Down

Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" takes place—you guessed it—in 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 poem—this 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 shifts—the 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 all—unless you count the memories of the past that we all carry with us.

Symbolism, Imagery & Wordplay

Night and Darkness Imagery

The poem takes place around the time of sunset in a country churchyard—also known as a cemetery. Kinda spooky, right? And the darkness of the setting is appropriate for the subject matter, too. The speaker is talking about 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.

  Farms and the Countryside Imagery

• 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 speaker—things 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 is—he'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.

    Trees and Birds

  • 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 poem—like 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 tree—this 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

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard Questions

Bring on the tough stuff - there’s 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" language—too 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 a country 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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