Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is a poem by Thomas Gray, completed in 1750 and first published in 1751.[1] The poem's origins are unknown, but it was partly inspired by Gray's thoughts following the death of the poet Richard West in 1742. Originally titled Stanzas Wrote in a Country Church-Yard, the poem was completed when Gray was living near the Church of St Giles, Stoke Poges. It was sent to his friend Horace Walpole, who popularised the poem among London literary circles. Gray was eventually forced to publish the work on 15 February 1751 in order to preempt a magazine publisher from printing an unlicensed copy of the poem.
The poem is an elegy in name but not in form; it employs a style similar to that of contemporary odes, but it embodies a meditation on death, and remembrance after death. The poem argues that the remembrance can be good and bad, and the narrator finds comfort in pondering the lives of the obscure rustics buried in the churchyard. The two versions of the poem, Stanzas and Elegy, approach death differently; the first contains a stoic response to death, but the final version contains an epitaph which serves to repress the narrator's fear of dying.
The Elegy quickly became popular. It was printed many times and in a variety of formats, translated into many languages, and praised by critics even after Gray's other poetry had fallen out of favour. But while many have continued to commend its language and universal aspects, some have felt that the ending is unconvincing – failing to resolve the questions raised by the poem in a way helpful to the obscure rustic poor who form its central image.
^An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (Fifth Edition, corrected ed.). London: R.Dodsley in Pall Mall. 1751. Retrieved 7 September 2015. via Google Books
and 21 Related for: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard information
ElegyWritteninaCountryChurchyard is a poem by Thomas Gray, completed in 1750 and first published in 1751. The poem's origins are unknown, but it was...
known for his ElegyWritteninaCountryChurchyard, published in 1751. Gray was a self-critical writer who published only 13 poems in his lifetime, despite...
the elegy. Elegy presents every thing as lost and gone or absent and future. A famous example of elegy is Thomas Gray's ElegyWritteninaCountry Churchyard...
Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd,” which reflects on the death of Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Gray's "ElegyWritteninaCountryChurchyard", which mourns...
genre; Thomas Gray's ElegyWritteninaCountryChurchyard and Edward Young's Night Thoughts are typical members of the genre. In the European devotional...
seen in the Candleshoe library at sunrise. "The paths of glory lead but to the grave". This refers to the poem "ElegyWritteninaCountryChurchyard" by...
hand in marriage. She accepts, and the two are quietly married. Hardy took the title from Thomas Gray's poem "ElegyWritteninaCountryChurchyard" (1751):...
novel written for children. 1751: Thomas Gray wrote ElegyWritteninaCountryChurchyard. Also in 1751, Denis Diderot began the Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire...
of Gray's ElegyWritteninaCountryChurchyard whose object was to give them an unlikely setting. Imitation of lines from Pope's epistle in this context...
genre. Gothic poets include Thomas Gray (1716–71), whose ElegyWritteninaCountryChurchyard (1751) is "the best known product of this kind of sensibility";...
earliest Latin translations of Gray's ElegyWritteninaCountryChurchyard, which went through several editions both in England and abroad. Anstey was the...
Multiple examples can be seen in lines such as the following from ElegyWritteninaCountryChurchyard by Thomas Gray, published in 1751: Th' applause of list'ning...
Dryden. In the 18th century famous poets such as Thomas Gray continued to use the form in works such as "ElegyWritteninaCountryChurchyard". Shakespearean...