Page 257 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry

Notes Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed 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 favourite 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 through the church-way path we saw him borne,-
Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved 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 frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melacholy marked him for her own.
Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven (’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.

25.2.1 Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard Summary

In the first stanza, the speaker observes the signs of a country day drawing to a close: a curfew bell
ringing, a herd of cattle moving across the pasture, and a farm laborer returning home. The speaker
is then left alone to contemplate the isolated rural scene. The first line of the poem sets a distinctly
somber tone: the curfew bell does not simply ring; it “knells”—a term usually applied to bells rung
at a death or funeral. From the start, then, Gray reminds us of human mortality.

The second stanza sustains the somber tone of the first: the speaker is not mournful,
but pensive, as he describes the peaceful landscape that surrounds him. Even the
air is characterized as having a “solemn stillness.”

The sound of an owl hooting intrudes upon the evening quiet. We are told that the owl “complains”;
in this context, the word does not mean “to whine” or “grumble,” but “to express sorrow.” The
owl’s call, then, is suggestive of grief. Note that at no point in these three opening stanzas does Gray
directly refer to death or a funeral; rather, he indirectly creates a funereal atmosphere by describing
just a few mournful sounds.

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