Page 260 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

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

Stanza 1 Notes
The evening bell ringing in the church marked the departure of the day. The cattle were slowly
moving to shelter, as they passed through the fields, and so did the farmers, who were walking
heavily after the day’s hard work. As they went home, they left the poet who was sitting in the
churchyard also in the growing darkness of the advancing evening.
Curfew- In medieval times, curfew refers to- the ringing of a bell to prompt people to extinguish
fires and lights. The ringing of the evening bell in the church marks the end of the day (feel the
expression: the parting day).
The first paragraph sets the mood of the poem, gray leaves a cliché of romanticism blended with
satire.
Stanza 2
The faintly lighted landscape is slowly fading and becoming invisible to the eye. The evening breeze
has stopped and the air holds stillness, except the beetles, making a monotonous humming sound.
Also one could hear the jingling sound of the bells round the neck of the sleepy cattle when they
move their head.
Stanza 3
As the evening sets in, the owl complains to the moon about her inconvenience. She complained
about the disturbance created as someone was passing by its nest from her ancient reign, an ivy
mantled tower.
Stanza 4
Beneath the shade of the yew tree and elm tree, gnarled and knotted through the ages, lies the
narrow burials of the rustic villagers of Hamlet. Each of them sleeps for an eternal period of time in
their narrow grave surrounded by grassy plot and heaps of earth.
Stanza 5
The poet laments over the fact that these men and women, use to wake up by listening to the chirping
of the birds, the trumpet sounds made by the cock and their echoes. But now, not even the mist of
the morning breeze and the call of the birds and animals shall make them rise from their grave.
Stanza 6
No more shall one find the hearth (fireplace) burning. Those beautiful glimpses of children climbing
to their father’s knees to have the first kiss, the affectionate show of love and the envied kiss shall
never to be seen again.
Stanza 7
These rustic men had done a lot of harvesting in their lifetime. The hard lumps of earth succumbed
to heir sickle, as they merrily ploughed the fields with their strong stroke of axe.
Stanza 8
Let not Greatness and ambition mock these people by saying that they were totally useless. They
were very happy and content with their ‘homely joys’.
Stanza 9
Let not Grandeur (referring to grand people) look at them with contempt and smile at the petty
records of life of these people.
Stanza 10
All those fame and power which great people always boast off, the beauty, the riches and the wealth
they possess finally becomes the same during the last moments of life. They to die in the same were
as these rustics have died. All the glories finally find its eternal way into the grave.

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