Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1751

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Remembrance and Respect for the Dead

“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is a plea for remembrance for the dead, but it’s also a little bit more complicated than that because the dead in this poem haven’t left much behind by which to remember them. There are only two ways the speaker can access the lives of the lower-class people buried in the churchyard and remember them—through the imagination (stanzas 5-7 imagine the lives these farmers must have led) and through the crude tombstones in the churchyard (stanzas 20-23 describe the rough memorials of the graves).

Even when it comes to the poet’s imagining of his own death, he offers precious little. In stanzas 25-29, a local tells what he knows of the poet’s life. In stanzas 30-32, the epitaph is read. All told, only 15 stanzas of the 32-stanza poem are dedicated to remembrance (stanzas 5-7, stanzas 20-23, stanzas 25-29 and 30-32).

Remembering the dead is an important theme in this poem, but it’s not everything. Equally as important is, as Sacks claims:

an attitude toward the dead, an attitude that the poet hopes will eventually be accorded to himself. This attitude includes piety, compassion, respect, and attentiveness—the kind of attentiveness we owe the mute. (Sacks, Peter. The English Elegy. Johns Hopkins University, 1985, p. 134)

Gray cultivates this attitude first by evacuating the landscape (in the first stanza the herd of cows and the plowman go home), then by evacuating the senses. In the second stanza, it gets very dark, and the speaker can’t see much in the dark: “Now fades the glimm’ring landscape on the sight” (Line 5). Also, motion is slowed to a near stop: “the air a solemn stillness holds” (Line 7). There isn’t much to do in the churchyard at this time of night except for contemplate the dead and as the speaker contemplates the men buried beneath his feet, he repeatedly reminds the reader to respect them. Stanzas 8-19 are about respecting, not just remembering, the dead.

Simplicity

“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is about simplicity. The lives of the peasants buried in the churchyard were simple, but the poet insists the reader should respect them. The poet writes that “Grandeur” (Line 31) should not disdain: “The short and simple annals of the poor” (Line 32). Moreover, like their lives, the graves of these farmers are simple. Gray describes “[s]ome frail memorial still erected nigh, / With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked” (Lines 78-79). Even so, these crude tombstones provoke a sad “sigh” (Line 80).

It is not, however, just the lives and graves of the lower-class that are simple; the language and structure of the poem is simple, too. Eighteenth century English poetry is famous for being ornate and artificial; in other words, it includes a great deal of artifice. Alexander Pope’s mock-epic “The Rape of the Lock” (first published in 1712) is a good example of high artifice in 18th century poetry. Gray, however, opts for simplicity in his content and style. The opening stanza includes four simple, rustic images. Moreover, each image gets its own line, which makes the visuals easy to picture because the complete visual is given in one line. The reader does not have to hold multiple lines in their head to see the image. While later in the poem some of Gray’s images and sentences take a bit longer to develop than in the first stanza, Gray never uses any enjambment. Every line in the poem is a complete unit. Thus, the simplicity of the content is matched in the way the poem is written.

The Universality of Death

In different hands, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” could be a truly creepy poem; after all, the speaker is hanging out in a graveyard at night. Gray went to Eton with Horace Walpole, the author of The Castle of Otranto (“Thomas Gray.” Poetry Foundation). Walpole’s novel is widely considered to be the first gothic novel and if he wrote this poem, a man hanging out in the pitch dark in a cemetery would definitely be creepy. Gray’s poem, however, is solemn and mournful but not spine-tingling. One of the ways Gray prevents his elegy from becoming frightening is by focusing on the universality of death; he emphasizes how common death is. Gray could have centered on the terror and unknown nature of death, but he chooses to present death as ordinary. Johnson explains this feature of Gray’s elegy as follows: “The Church-yard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo” (Johnson, Samuel. “Thomas Gray.” The Lives of English Poets).