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Unit 25: Thomas Gray: The Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

It is in the fourth stanza that the speaker directly draws our attention to the graves in the country Notes
churchyard. We are presented with two potentially conflicting images of death. Line 14 describes
the heaps of earth surrounding the graves; in order to dig a grave, the earth must necessarily be
disrupted. Note that the syntax of this line is slightly confusing. We would expect this sentence to
read “Where the turf heaves”—not “where heaves the turf.” Gray has inverted the word order. Just
as the earth has been disrupted, the syntax imitates the way in which the earth has been disrupted.
But by the same token, the “rude Forefathers” buried beneath the earth seem entirely at peace: we
are told that they are laid in “cells,” a term which reminds us of the quiet of a monastery, and that
they “sleep.”
If the “Forefathers” are sleeping, however, the speaker reminds us that they will never again rise
from their “beds” to hear the pleasurable sounds of country life that the living do. The term “lowly
beds” describes not only the unpretentious graves in which the forefathers are buried, but the humble
conditions that they endured when they were alive.

The speaker then moves on to consider some of the other pleasures the dead will no
longer enjoy: the happiness of home, wife, and children.

The dead will also no longer be able to enjoy the pleasures of work, of ploughing the fields each
day. This stanza points to the way in which the “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” contains
elements of both Augustan and Romantic poetry. Poetry that describes agriculture—as this one
does—is called georgic. Georgic verse was extremely popular in the eighteenth century. Note,
however, that Gray closely identifies the farmers with the land that they work. This association of
man and nature is suggestive of a romantic attitude. The georgic elements of the stanza almost
demand that we characterize it as typical of the eighteenth century, but its tone looks forward to the
Romantic period.

Write down the significant features of the poem, “Elegy written on a country
churchyard”.
The next four stanzas caution those who are wealthy and powerful not to look down on the poor.
These lines warn the reader not to slight the “obscure” “destiny” of the poor—the fact that they will
never be famous or have long histories, or “annals,” written about them.
This stanza invokes the idea of memento mori (literally, a reminder of mortality). The speaker reminds
the reader that regardless of social position, beauty, or wealth, all must eventually die.
The speaker also challenges the reader not to look down on the poor for having modest, simple
graves. He suggests, moreover, that the elaborate memorials that adorn the graves of the “Proud”
are somehow excessive. In this context, the word “fretted” in line 39 has a double meaning: on the
one hand, it can refer to the design on a cathedral ceiling; on the other hand, it can suggest that there
is something “fretful,” or troublesome, about the extravagant memorials of the wealthy.
The speaker observes that nothing can bring the dead back to life, and that all the advantages that
the wealthy had in life are useless in the face of death. Neither elaborate funeral monuments nor
impressive honors can restore life. Nor can flattery in some way be used to change the mind of
death. Note here Gray’s use of personification in characterizing both “flattery” and “death”—as
though death has a will or mind of its own.

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