Chapter - 7
"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”

- Thomas Gray

Life And Works of Thomas Gray : In a Nut-Shell

Thomas Gray was born on December 26, 1716 in Cornhill, London. His father, Philip Gray was a broker or Money Scrivener' in London. He was the only surviving child of his parents out of twelve children. So, his parents lavished all their tenderest care upon him. His mother's brother was an Assistant Master at Eton. So he was admitted there. There he came in touch with Horace Walpole. Soon they because friend. After leaving Eton, he joined St. Peter College and Pembork College of the University of Cambridge. He left the University with intention of studying law at the Inner Temple. He led a life of solitude that encouraged his taste towards scholarship. He read widely and particularly studied history of Classical Ages of Greece and Rome. His isolated life and contemplation on the serious aspects of human life developed a constant mood of melancholy in him. It would have adversely affected his character, but just in time, his friend Horace Walpole asked him to accompany him on the continental tour in 1733. Gray accepted his offer and accompanied his friend on the tour. The tour gave a tremendous change to his mental weariness and low spirits. This continental tour had greatly influenced his writings. After completing his tour in 1741, he settled down in Cambridge where he passed the whole of his later life with occasional visits to London and the country side.

Thomas Gray was offered 'Poet Laureateship' but he refused with his characteristic humility of temperament. Later in 1768, he was appointed professor of Modern History at Cambridge. He accepted it but he delivered no lectures. The main pre-occupation of his later years was study and scholarship. He died in Cambridge at the age of 57 and according to his will, he was buried by the side of his mother in Stoke Poges churchyard-the very churchyard which was inspired him to compose his famous elegy in his early years.

Some poets survive by a few grains of precious metal extracted form the mass of their work. But Gray was the metal without mass. The total bulk of his poetic work, including that in language other than English, is very small and in that small amount, very little was printed in his life time. He made no attempt to collect his writings or to prepare them for publication or to make them generally known. His prose is enormously larger in quantity than his verse and includes family's letters that are among the most delightful in the language.

His 'Ode on Spring', 'Hymn to Adversity' and 'Hymn to Ignorance'-all published in 1742, were his first complete poems. 'Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College' (1947), one of the best known words of Gray, shows his characteristic mixture of morality and melancholy, a mood of constant recurrence in all but is playful. 'Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes' (1748) is also a very remarkable poem. The most famous of his poem and one of the most quoted in English literature, is his polished, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard". He began this poem in 1742, completed in 1749 and published in 1751. Its popularity comes from its democratic quality, its simple philosophy of life and death, and its eminent quotability. It is the greatest achievement of the 'Graveyard school' of reflective poetry. Gray's interest in medieval and Scandinavian themes, produced four odes. The first two is Imitation of Pinder, Greek lyric poet of the fifth century B.C. "The Progress of Poesy", and "The Bard" both were published at Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill Press in 1757. "The Fatal Sisters" (1761) and "The Desent of Odin" (1761) were another odes. His collected poems were issued in 1768. His journal of the English lake Trip and 'Letters' were published four years after his death. The Letters' are among the best in English Literature.

In his love for the old and adventures into the new, he anticipates an age that was to develop both his romantic instincts and his classical restraint.

Elegiac Elements in Gray's Poetry

"An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" has been composed by Thomas Gray. This elegy won a great fame for Gray. This elegy is one of the most famous poem in English literature. This elegy has exercised great influence on European literature. A note of melancholy pervades in it. This elegiac note is the result of his early life of seclusion and his premature habit of thinking too much over the serious aspects of human life.

The 'An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' is elegiac lyric in which Gray mourn the death of neglected and humble village-folks. He laments over the great tragic waste of their potential greatness. He is very much grieved to think of their poverty and helplessness. This elegy is the poet's pathetic cry for human sympathy. He has written simple universal ideas which make a direct appeal to every heart. Some of the lines of his poem have become proverbial:

"The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

Gray tells that 'artless tale of unhonoured bead'. The cruel hand of death spares none. He calls upon the rich, powerful and ambitious people not to be proud of their position but to keep a sympathetic outlook for the people. The elegy ends on a personal note about the poet's loneliness in the world and his sad and humble life. Death is the ultimate goal of all men and all things. A strong note of sadness runs throughout the elegy. The flow of grief in the elegy is placid and calm. Sadness grows in the poem with the poet's sad reflection on the tragedy of human life. It strikes the key-note of man's life on earth. The elegy reveals Gray's habitual human sympathy and his sadness on the tragic drama of human life. His heart is moved to tears by the misfortunes of the poor. Its wide appeal is due to the note of deep melancholy that runs through the poem.

This elegy ranks with the other great elegies in English, namely Milton's 'Lycridas', Shelley's 'Adonais', Tennyson's 'In Memorium' and Arnold's Thyrsis'. Gray's elegy is such a poem that will never die. His elegy does not lament the passing away of a friend or a great man or a poet but mourns the nameless and neglected dead buried in a village churchyard. The elegy contains melancholy reflections on life in general and on the poet's own solitary life in particular.

Romantic Elements in Gray's Poetry

Beginning as a classicist and a disciple of Dryden, Gray ended in thorough-going romanticism. His early poems contain nothing ramantic. His 'Elegy' has something of the romantic mood, but shows many conventional touches. In the 'Pindaric Odes' the romantic feeling asserts itself boldly, and he ends in enthusiastic study of worse and celtic poetry and mythology.

The famous elegy marks a transition from the early period of classicism to the later period of romanticism. The elegy, despite in many conventional touches is, "romantic in its mood, and stands, a transition between his period of classicism and his more highly imaginative poetry." We may add that besides its romantic mood, the elegy is also romantic its true humanitarian note and its feeling for Nature. In its subjective tone in its vague aspiration, fondness for solitude and gloomy meditation. It is quite different from other poems of the fashionable school.

The two Pindaric Odes show Gray well on the way towards romanticism. The two odes specially "The Bard', are the most imaginative poetry that Gray ever produced, and were distinctly in advance of the age. In these odes, Gray does no longer follows his age; he strikes out ahead of it, and helps to mould its literary tastes. Rev. R. Patter praised the Bard for its "Wild romantic scenery" and regarded it as one of the fine odes in the world. The two odes were praised as "Shakespearean", sublime and pindaric. They have sentiment and emotion, imagination and sensibility, wonder and curiosity, force and fire which are the chief characteristics of romanticism. They open out vast vistas to the mind and imagination of the readers, and take them over the wide. spaces of the past, or upto climbs beyond the solar path or to, "Steep of Snowdon's Slaggy. Sides." Besides a love of wild nature and distant unknown places, the Bard also shows a feeling for the super-natural;

On yonder cliffs, a griesly band, I see them sit, they linger yet, Avengers of their native land;

The two odes palpitate with emotion and imagination as they have been written, "Mith a master's hand and prophet's fire". They take Gray a long step forward towards romanticism as they have the romantic flights of imagination, feeling for the past, love wild nature, and suggestions of the super-natural.

"In the Fatal Sisters", "The Descent of Odin" and "The Triumphes of Owen" Gray is strictly a romantic. As Gosse puts it, Gray completely freed himself from the trammels of the artificial and conventional tastes and prophesied the new romantic age that was coming. Gray was also a romantic in the sense that he could shake off the rigid hold of the Heroic Couplet and use with great skill a number of other measures. He has romantic sensibility, imagination, emotion, love of nature and simple humanity, feeling for the super-natural and a love of the past.

Seeds of Future in Gray's Poetry

"The Bard' expresses the sentiments of the bard. The scheme of the ode is strictly historical. The bard, with a voice more than human, reproaches the king with all the misery and desolation which he had brought on his country, fore-tells the misfortune of the Norman race and with his poetic spirit, declares that all of his cruelty shall never extinguish the noble ardour of poetic genius in this island and that men shall never be wanting to celebrate true virtue and valour in immortal strains to expose vice, in famous pleasure, and boldly censure tyranny and oppression. The poetry of Gray abounds in all the seeds of the coming age, it is wholly animated by emotions which around it are preparing the rejuvenation of literature. To this, yet obscure work, it has contributed as much as any other. But it is revolutionary with a wise produce that far from denying the established order of things, rather uphold it, and even prolongs it into innovations of the future.

In the beginning, Gray was a classicist and disciple of Dryden but later on Gray ended in thorough-going romanticism. His early poems contain nothing romantic, his elegy has something of the romantic mood, but shows many conventional touches. In the 'Pindaric Odes' the romantic feeling asserts itself boldly and he ends in enthusiastic study of worse and celtic poetry and mythology. The famous elegy marks a transition from the early period of classicism to the later period of romanticism. The elegy, descriptive in many conventional touches is, "romantic in its mood, and stands a transition between his period of classicism and his more highly imaginative poetry". We may add that besides its romantic mood. The elegy is also romantic in its true humanitarian note and its feeling for nature. In its subjective tone, in its vague aspiration, fondness for solitude and gloomy meditation, it is quite different from other poems of the fashionable school.

The two Pindaric odes show Gray well on the way towards romanticism. The two odes, specially "The Bard", are the most imaginative poetry Gray ever produced, and were distinctly in advance of the age. In these odes, Gray does no longer follow his age; he strikes out ahead of it, and helps us to mould its literary tastes. A Rev. R. Patter praised the Bard for its "Wild romantic scenery" and regarded it as one of the fine odes in the world. The two odes were praised as "Shakespearean" sublime and pindaric. They have sentiment and emotion, imagination and sensibility, wonder and curiosity, force and fire which are the chief characteristic of romanticism. They open out vast vistas to the mind and imagination of the readers, and take them over the wide spaces of the past, or upto climbs beyond the solar path or to, "Steep of Snowdon's Slaggy Sides".

The poet does not lament in the elegy the death of any particular person. He only laments the sad and pitiable lot of humble village folk, who lived unknown and died unwept, unhonoured and unsung, and are now lying, buried under the 'mouldering heap' of their humble graves. These nameless: and neglected villagers were virtuous, intelligent and full of capacities for doing great deed. But owing to their poverty, their unknown talents and capacities never had the chance to grow and bear fruit poverty was their only life-long friend. They, were sincere souls and large hearts. They were quite innocent, and the cunning of the world had not touched them with its corrupt hand, they were wedded to misery and tears and they quietly passed away without a loud sigh. During his sad reflections on their most uneventful life, the poet contrasts it with the life of town men, which is full of material wealth, outward pomp, glory and fame. He contemplates on the futility of all there temporary things, for nothing is permanent in the world, and the 'paths of glory lead but to the grave'. He also reflects upon his own loneliness in the world and his miserable life. The elegy ends on a personal note, with an epitaph upon his supposed death.

An Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard
(Substance of the Poem)

The poem 'An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' sounds the still sad music of humanity. It a pathetic cry of human sympathy. It is philosophical elegiac lyric on the mystery of life. It is a simple, humble and unpretentious lamentation of the poet on the tragic and obscure waste of the potential greatness of the thousands of unknown human beings in the world. It is the most widely known poem in English language. Many phrases and lines from it have become 'house hold words'. Immediately after its publication in 1751, it caught the imagination of the English speaking world. It became so popular, and so fast that in two years time, it ran into eleven editions. Like spell of magic it takes the reader's mind. It makes a reader's appeal because the sentiments embodied in it are universal and embrace the whole humanity.

कविता का हिन्दी सारांश

प्रस्तुत कविता मानवता के शोक की शान्त एवं स्थिर प्रतिध्वनि है। यह मानवीय सहानुभूति की दर्दयुक्त चीख है। यह कविता जीवन के रहस्य का दार्शनिक शोकगीत है। यह कविता हजारों मनुष्यों की सम्भावित श्रेष्ठताओं के दुःखद एवं अस्पष्ट रूप से व्यर्थ हो जाने पर एक साधारण, विनम्र एवं अभिनयमुक्त विलाप है। यह कविता अंग्रेजी भाषा की सर्वाधिक प्रसिद्ध कविता है। इस कविता के बहुत से उपवाक्य एवं पंक्तियाँ दैनिक जीवन में प्रयोग होने वाले शब्द बन गये हैं। 1951 में इसके प्रकाशन के तत्काल बाद इस कविता ने अंग्रेजी 'भाषी संसार की कल्पनाओं को जकड़ लिया। यह कविता इतनी तीव्र गति से प्रसिद्ध हुई कि दो वर्ष के

अन्तराल में ही इसके ग्यारह अंक प्रकाशित हुए। यह कविता जादू की भाँति पाठक के मस्तिष्क को प्रभावित करती है। यह पाठक के हृदयों को इसिलए प्रभावित करती है, क्योंकि इसमें व्यक्त भावनाएँ सार्वकालिक हैं एवं सम्पूर्ण मानवता से सम्बन्धित हैं।

Points To Ponder (About The Poem)

It is evening. The poet is left alone in the darkenss. He reflects on the graves of the poor villagers that lie before him.

The villagers are dead. No one will wait to welcome them. No sound will ever make them awake.

The rich and the poor all die,. The paths of glory lead but to the grave. They were poor and uneducated. They never got opportunity to become Milton and Cromwell.

The humble position of the villagers not only closed their ways to fame but alsos closed the ways to crime and bloodshed.

There are no monuments of marble busts on the graves of the poor villagers. Only their names and dates of birth are written on the stones on their graves.

One day the poet will also die. Some passer-by will enquire about him and some old shepherd will tell his life story.

He had no wealth and fame. He was a melancholic man. He gave sympathy to those who were in trouble. It is not good to speak of his merits and faults. He lies on the bossom of God.

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