ELEGY (WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD) By: Thomas

Gray, 1716-1771 Thomas Gray's Elegy laments the death of life in general

while mourning long gone ancestors and exhibiting the transition made by

the speaker, from grief and mourning to acceptance and hope. It was

written in 1742 and revised to its published form in 1746, and is one of

the three highlights of the elegiac form in English literature, the others

being Milton's "Lycidas" and Tennyson's In Memoriam. It was first

published, anonymously, in 1751, under the title "An Elegy wrote in a

Country Churchyard." Although believed to be started in 1742 the exact

date of composition of the Elegy, apart from the concluding stanzas,

cannot be exactly determined. The Elegy was concluded at Stoke Poges in

June, 1750, where Gray was buried. The churchyard as described by Gray

is typical rather than particular; of the five disputed "originals" Stoke

Poges bears the least resemblance to the graveyard in the Elegy. The poem

starts off dark and dreary often rousing images of death. The first four

stanzas establish the time and setting of the poem. There was a curfew

around the time that this was written and the first line supports this. It was

just as his will live on, helps to cope with the loss. Gray started the Elegy

goes into the description of the unhonored dead or people who received no

after a hard day , is on his way home. There is a "solemn stillness"(line6)

stanzas of the Elegy as the Epitaph. It is not, however, his gravestone but

94) forever burns their memory into our minds. The Elegy takes a sudden

lost pleasures of the dead. Line 21 starts describing these pleasures by

which also suggests twilight or some time in the evening. Line 15 places

graveyard and reads his own gravestone which is included as the last three

speaker poses a question. "Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid / Some

experience. Stanzas seven through nine deal with death as a part of life.

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 974
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)