Thomas Gray's Elegy in a Country Churchyard

Time honored poetry (1500-1800) written in the established forms and structures are often considered too formal, too demanding or too obscure for today’s students to read and study. Much of this poetry employs allusions to Greek mythology and obliquely metaphorical language that confuse and frustrate them. Consequently, the classic poets from the 16th to 18th centuries such as Shakespeare, Donne, Milton, Marvell and Pope are increasingly neglected in schools. Even the more accessible Romantic poets of the 19th century, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Keats, once very popular subjects in English classrooms, are also fading from the English curriculum. Finally, the modern masters Yeats, Eliot, Frost and Stevens, who require as much effort to understand as the classic poems do, make fewer appearances in the classrooms.

What has replaced the great poems of the past are contemporary poems, usually written in free verse that address themes depicting everyday experiences that students can identify with. As worthwhile as some of these poems might be, studying classic poems rewards both teachers and students with profound universal truths in language artistically eloquent.

The classic poem, Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, is one of the richest in the English language. Even though it was published against his wishes, it is a poem that should be read by all students. The poem has been admired for its reflections on the universal experiences of memory and mortality and praised by readers. It is a somber, evocative and powerful meditation on human experience:

If you would like to listen to the poem as you read, here is an audio of it.

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

                                   1
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.
                                   2
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;
                                   3
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.
                                   4
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.
                                    5
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.
                                     6
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.
                                      7
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!
                                      8
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.
                                      9
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.
                                      10
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.
                                       11
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?
                                       12
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.
                                       13
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.
                                        14
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.
                                        15
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.
                                        16
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,
                                        17
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,
                                         18
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.
                                         19
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.
                                          20
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.
                                          21
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.
                                          22
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?
                                          23
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.
                                          24
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,
                                          25
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.
                                          26
"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.
                                          27
"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.
                                           28
"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;
                                           29
"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
                                           30
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.
                                           31
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.
                                           32
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.

  

The 32 stanzas that comprise the poem begins with Gray’s observation of the landscape, then proceeds through a meditation on the circumstances of life, on the inevitability of death, and on the necessity of religious faith.

In the first four stanzas Gray’s speaker listens to the tolling “curfew,” watches the “lowing herds,” sees the farmer head homeward and then finds himself isolated in the darkening evening. He is greeted by the “droning” sound of the “beetle,” and the bells “tinkling” in the “distant folds.” In the “ivy-mantle tower” the “owl” is disturbed by his presence and “does to the moon complain.” These first three stanzas evoke a charming quality to the scene that is countered by the speaker’s emotional response, which is voiced in the last line of the first stanza: “And leaves the world to darkness and me.” The speaker evokes more than a sense of solitude; thoughts echo a profound loneliness, an isolation from humanity. He then turns to the churchyard, surveys the grounds, which are punctuated by “many a mouldering heap” in which “The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.” The sight of the graves initiates the speaker’s meditation on the simple dignity of villagers.

Through stanzas 5-7, the speaker visualizes the activities the “Forefathers” participated in. He sees the local resident farmers and inhabitants perform the work that give authentic meaning to their lives and that clothe these men and women in a simple and pure dignity.

Contrasting with the rustic elements in 5-8 are the “Proud” aristocratic class in stanzas 8-11. Gray warns the upper class, who when they die are memorialized ornately in grand mausoleums or entombed within “fretted vaults[s]” where the “pealing anthem swells the note of praise, that in the end death’s scythe harvests them the same as it does the anonymous poor. The question that ends stanza 11 resonates in its leveling, incontestable power over all humans regardless of their nobility, status or wealth:

Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

The “rude Forefathers,” who lived and died in obscurity, nevertheless might have been as great as the great men of the age. What limited their “achievements” in life were not their potential, but the circumstance into which they were born, lived and died. As Gray tells us in stanzas 12-15, like men who accomplished extraordinary deeds, the forgotten poor could have been “pregnant with celestial fire,” “sway’d” the “rod of empire,” or even “walked to ecstasy the lyre” as a poet. Like a “flower [that] is born to blush unseen,” they might have become renowned for their poetry, perhaps another Milton, but for their situation in life.

Though their poverty circumscribed the "growing virtues" of the rustics, it also lessened the likelihood of their "crimes," as Gray notes in stanzas 16-19. Their simple lives separated them “Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife” and preserved “the noiseless tenour” of their existence.

In stanzas 20-21, Gray turns back to the churchyard headstones and wonders about the “unlettered Muse,” who etched the headstones with “elegy,” “many a holy text,” to memorialize those “rude Forefathers” sleeping in their “narrow cell[s].” In Stanza 23, Gray becomes emotional himself as he thinks of the men and women who grieve their loved ones.

His response to the churchyard causes him to reflect on his own mortality, and Gray introduces in stanza 25 a new speaker, a “hoary-headed swain” who, in stanzas 25-29, will remember him as a “woeful-wan, like one forlorn, / Or crazed with care, or cross’d in hopeless love.” After the swain elegizes Gray, The Epitaph, stanzas 30-32, closes the poem portraying Gray as a humble “Youth to Fortune and Fame unknown,” who ultimately place his faith in “The bosom of his Father and his God.”

"Needless Death After All"

 After Alex Pretti was murdered by CBP agents, Kristy Noem and Stephen Miller immediately slandered him. Noem said Pretti was a “domestic terrorist,” and Miller labeled him a “would be assassin.” Video evidence refuted those lies and families and friends of Good and Pretti told the truth about who these two really were. According to those who knew Good best, she was “extremely compassionate,” “loving,” “forgiving,” and “affectionate.” Pretti’s coworkers, friends and family spoke of him as a “role model,” “diligent and respectful,” “kind,” and “a good man.” When the history of Trump’s administration is written, they should be acknowledged prominently along with a cadre of individuals who have lost jobs/professions (the list is far too extensive to itemize) as casualties of a malevolent presidency.

Trump himself fantasies about how history will remember him. He imagines being glorified as a great leader: a man whose effect on human events will astound future audiences; a man whom poets elegize for the wonders he has achieved. In truth, historians who chronicle his two terms will paint a grim and disturbing portrait of a man mastered by greed, envy, spite and narcissism. Poets will only write elegies that will drip with a caustic ridicule of his poisonous personality. Of course, Maga devotees such as Mark Levin will forever ooze with sycophantic adulation for him.

The elegy, a form of poetry that dates back to Greek and Roman poetry, and has been used to express love, loss or mourning, among other subjects. In 16th century English literature, the elegy became more strictly a poem of lament for the death of someone. The most famous elegy (or it used to be) is Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1750). Shortly after World War I, William Butler Yeats wrote his finest elegy, lamenting the death of Robert Gregory, who was killed while flying in Italy during the war:

In Memory of Major Robert Gregory

I

Now that we're almost settled in our house
I'll name the friends that cannot sup with us
Beside a fire of turf in th' ancient tower,
And having talked to some late hour
Climb up the narrow winding stair to bed:
Discoverers of forgotten truth
Or mere companions of my youth,
All, all are in my thoughts to-night being dead.

II

Always we'd have the new friend meet the old
And we are hurt if either friend seem cold,
And there is salt to lengthen out the smart
In the affections of our heart,
And quarrels are blown up upon that head;
But not a friend that I would bring
This night can set us quarrelling,
For all that come into my mind are dead.

III

Lionel Johnson comes the first to mind,
That loved his learning better than mankind.
Though courteous to the worst; much falling he
Brooded upon sanctity
Till all his Greek and Latin learning seemed
A long blast upon the horn that brought
A little nearer to his thought
A measureless consummation that he dreamed.

IV

And that enquiring man John Synge comes next,
That dying chose the living world for text
And never could have rested in the tomb
But that, long travelling, he had come
Towards nightfall upon certain set apart
In a most desolate stony place,
Towards nightfall upon a race
passionate and simple like his heart.

V

And then I think of old George Pollexfen,
In muscular youth well known to Mayo men
For horsemanship at meets or at racecourses,
That could have shown how pure-bred horses
And solid men, for all their passion, live
But as the outrageous stars incline
By opposition, square and trine;
Having grown sluggish and contemplative.

VI

They were my close companions many a year.
A portion of my mind and life, as it were,
And now their breathless faces seem to look
Out of some old picture-book;
I am accustomed to their lack of breath,
But not that my dear friend's dear son,
Our Sidney and our perfect man,
Could share in that discourtesy of death

VII

For all things the delighted eye now sees
Were loved by him: the old storm-broken trees
That cast their shadows upon road and bridge;
The tower set on the stream's edge;
The ford where drinking cattle make a stir
Nightly, and startled by that sound
The water-hen must change her ground;
He might have been your heartiest welcomer.

VIII

When with the Galway foxhounds he would ride
From Castle Taylor to the Roxborough side
Or Esserkelly plain, few kept his pace;
At Mooneen he had leaped a place
So perilous that half the astonished meet
Had shut their eyes; and where was it
He rode a race without a bit?
And yet his mind outran the horses' feet.

IX

We dreamed that a great painter had been born
To cold Clare rock and Galway rock and thorn,
To that stern colour and that delicate line
That are our secret discipline
Wherein the gazing heart doubles her might.
Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,
And yet he had the intensity
To have published all to be a world's delight.

X

What other could so well have counselled us
In all lovely intricacies of a house
As he that practised or that understood
All work in metal or in wood,
In moulded plaster or in carven stone?
Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,
And all he did done perfectly
As though he had but that one trade alone.

XI

Some burn dam faggots, others may consume
The entire combustible world in one small room
As though dried straw, and if we turn about
The bare chimney is gone black out
Because the work had finished in that flare.
Soldier, scholar, horseman, he,
As 'twere all life's epitome.
What made us dream that he could comb grey hair?

XII

I had thought, seeing how bitter is that wind
That shakes the shutter, to have brought to mind
All those that manhood tried, or childhood loved
Or boyish intellect approved,
With some appropriate commentary on each;
Until imagination brought
A fitter welcome; but a thought
Of that late death took all my heart for speech.  

The poem’s first two stanzas begin with Yeats in his summer home, an ancient tower in Galway he purchased in 1917. As he sits there with his wife, he speaks of the departed friends who “cannot sup with us.” He and his wife “talk to some late hour,” then climb the “narrow winding stair to bed,” those dead “friends” still occupying his “thoughts.” He recalls times when his new and old friends would meet and how it disconcerted him if either were “cold” or quarrelsome with one another. But a sadness colors his thoughts, since not a “friend that I would bring” is alive to join in conversation.

The three of the friends Yeats has in mind are Lionel Johnson, John Synge, George Pollexfen, who each possessed a singular quality Yeats valued. In stanzas III-V, Yeats catalogues these friends according to their respective merits. Lionel Johnson was a friend Yeats met around 1888 or 1889. Yeats admired him for classical scholarship. Yeats met John Singe in Paris in 1896. Synge possessed a simple, creative spirit. George Pollexfen, Yeats’s maternal uncle, was a gifted athlete and horseman.

These friends have been dead for some time, and he compares his memory of them to looking through “some old picture-book.” He has become “accustomed to their lack of breath.” But the recent death of Robert Gregory still affects him profoundly. Gregory was the son of Lady Gregory, a close friend of Yeats, with whom he co-founded the Abbey Theatre. Robert Gregory was also Yeats’s friend, and it was he who encouraged Yeats to purchase Thoor Ballylee. After Lady Gregory received the news of her son’s death, she asked Yeats to write a poem honoring her son.

Robert Gregeory enters the poem in stanza VI, where Yeats quickly raises Gregory with the highest praise he could conceive, “Our Sidney and our perfect man.” He identifies him with Sir Philip Sidney “Our Sidney” and nominates him “our perfect man.” Sir Philp Sidney (1554-1586) was a courtier, scholar, soldier and poet who died fighting the Spanish in 1586 was considered one of the most brilliant men of the Renaissance. To Yeats, Gregory is the modern epitome of this renaissance man.

In stanzas VII-X, Yeats recalls Robert Gregory’s specific qualities. Gregory was a remarkably sensitive young man. He “loved and took delight” in all he saw and heard. He was no less warm-hearted toward those he met. Had he lived, “He might have been your heartiest welcomer.” His speed and daring on horseback surpassed all other riders, though his agile riding could not “keep pace” with the dexterous celerity of his mind. As an exceptional artist, Gregory’s passion doubled the artistic “discipline” of craft needed to produce great art. Finally, Gregory understood the finer “intricacies of a house” and he even “counselled” Yeats and his wife on how to improve their “Tower.”

A “Soldier, scholar, horseman,” Gregory embodied all that is perfection, and “life’s epitome.” Yeats asks, “What made us dream that he could comb grey hair?” How could perfection last into old age? In the last stanza, Yeats brings together the three men whom he ruminated about, and then his elegy strikes the deepest note of mourning. As he has attempted “to have brought to mind” Johnson, Synge, and Pollexfen to illustrate all Gregory’s attributes, a “bitter…wind…shakes” his imagination, and “a thought / Of that late death took all my heart for speech.”

Like Robert Gregory, Renee Good and Alex Pretti have their eulogizers. Their deaths will forever cause anguish. The qualities for which they will be remembered will forever console and sadden their families and friends. They died trying to help the victims of Trump’s wanton cruelty.