Vanessa Gregorio
English 21

01 March 2012

Death as his Muse: An Analysis on Thomas Gray’s
‘An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ The idea of death has always been an infamous concept. It has fascinated a lot of scholars, scientists, and artists alike, producing thousands of different theories and ideas trying to answer the mystery that surrounds such final and daunting thought. Death slowly crept up to the living and successfully immortalized itself in the form of ink on paper. As the field of literature ironically gave life to such pieces concerning death, one literary piece stood out because of its distinct qualities. Thomas Gray’s An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard exudes the exceptionality and the thought worth of a position in the canon of English Literature. Thomas Gray was born on 1716 in London, the only child out of eight who survived through adulthood. He studied in Eton College, where he met three of his most treasured friends: Horace Walpole, Thomas Ashton, and Richard West, all three of them coming from a wealthy family. After studying, he went on a Grand Tour of Europe, but had an unfortunate falling out with Walpole before the tour ended. Shortly after, the 24 year-old West died of tuberculosis (Koster.) These events were said to be the inspiration for the majority of Gray’s poems. After being a fellow for several universities for several years, Gray proceeded to live in Stoke Poges, where he stayed for the rest of his life until his death at the age of fifty-five.
The Elegy The Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is considered as Gray’s magnum opus, written sometime around 1742 and finished in 1751. It was universally admired in his lifetime and has remained continuously the most popular of mid-eighteenth century English poems. Morris Golden describes the poem as:
“… a beautiful technical accomplishment, as can be seen even in such slight details as the variation of the vowel sounds or in the poet’s rare discretion in the choice of adjectives and adverbs. Its phrasing is both elegant and memorable, as is evident from the incorporation of much of it.” (66)
The Elegy used to have other versions – Gray chose to revise them, and ended up with the final work with the added Epitaph in the end, with no thoughts of having it published at all. However, during this time, Gray has already sent Walpole (having reconciled with him) a copy of the poem, and the latter showed it to his friends and copies quickly multiplied until it reached its fame today (Ketton-Cremer 102.)
A Song for the Unknown An elegy is defined as ‘a mournful poem, especially of lament for the dead,’ and is usually written by a beloved in memory of the dead person. However, Gray’s Elegy does not follow these conventions as the persona in his poem laments the passing of unknown villagers of the countryside whose deaths are relatively ignored compared to the deaths of the rich or famous people, most likely the ones from the cities. Gray establishes a very melancholic scene in his poem – it starts on sundown, when the darkness slowly consumes the skies, and nocturnal animals wake up as the people settle down in their homes to rest. From here, the persona ponders on death, and as he looks around from where he is, he laments the death of the villagers – people who are practically unknown to him. Gray’s compassion for the poor shows in the poem, as he contemplates on how these people could have been as great as the famous people during that time, and compares them to gems buried under the sea or flowers blooming in a desert. The persona states that death is a final and inevitable thing which will come to all of us:
“Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?”
From here, Gray constructs a fine line on the idea of death by the rich and the poor. One’s aristocratic background or power will not stop him or her from dying, and neither will elaborate funerals or expensive urns will bring a person back to life. The persona defends that the poor, should not be mocked even if their lives were simple and monotonous. Like most of his contemporaries, Gray believed in the basic equality of all people at birth (Golden 33) and as one reaches his or her final breath, he tells us that we will come to terms that all of us will end up dead and eventually turn into ashes. The Elegy mourns for the unknown, for every other person whose death is not considered as important as the deaths of icons, scholars, leaders, or scientists. The melancholy tone and the compassion for the poor exuded in the poem cannot be helped but to be related to Gray’s personal life.
A Common Man Gray is considered to be a part of a mid 18th century group of poets now commonly known as the Graveyard School. Their name is derived from their melancholy reflections on man’s fate (Golden 68.) However, the Elegy transcends from the usual Graveyard Poetry as it transcends to the private sorrows of Thomas Gray. As a writer, he spent a good part of his life alone in the countryside, where he corresponded with his friends through letters which were compiled by his biographers. In one letter to West, Gray wrote:
“To me there hardly appears to be any medium between a public life and a private one; he who prefers the first, must put himself in a way of being serviceable to the rest of mankind, if he has a mind to be of any consequence among them: Nay, he must not refuse being in a certain degree even dependent upon some men who already are so.” (qtd in Golden 22) The Elegy is exceptional in a way that Gray was able to convey his feelings to the reader without feeling too attached or too distant from them. From lamenting about the villagers, the persona turns to meditate on his own death, and in turn, reflects every person’s thoughts about this penultimate event which will come to get us. The persona chooses to be a part of these villagers who lived a simple life, even if he was a scholar (as mentioned in the Epitaph)
The poem was one of his first writings, and it portrayed a man who was actually the opposite of the people whose deaths he lamented on. His value of his privacy was reflected in the poem:
“Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.”
Unlike the villagers of the countryside, Gray was able to get a respectable amount of education and the chance to be known was quite within his reach (Koster.) Instead, Gray chose to a very private life to be a part of the country residents whose narrow and repetitive flows of lives are usually looked down upon. In his poem, he expresses his wish to be known so:
“Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
‘Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn.’” Gray sees himself growing old in the village, going on a usual sundown routine. He wanted to be a common man, a part of the crowd whose lives aren’t much appreciated, but aren’t open to the public for prying and gossip. The last three quatrains, the Epitaph, solidifies Gray’s choice to be left alone, even if his solitary way of living wasn’t as conventional during that period, where men were supposed to have the desire for a wife and children.
Death as his Muse Most artists use the term ‘muse’ to describe their source of inspiration from which they derive their creative work from. Gray’s life experiences and several losses – his fallouts with Walpole, West’s death, outliving his mother – lead him to using these private sorrows to create such melancholic and reflective pieces. In a letter to Walpole this time, Gray tells his friend:
“Low spirits are my true and faithful companions; they get up with me, go to bed with me, make journeys and returns as I do; nay, and pay visits, and will even affect to be jocose, and force a feeble laugh with me; but most commonly we sit alone together, and are the prettiest insipid company in the world.”
(qtd in Golden 22) But what makes the Elegy so unique is that it served as a peek into a very private person’s lamentations and thoughts, in a time where famous writers were the equivalent of celebrities today.

Works Cited
Primary Source:
Gray, Thomas. “Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard.” The Complete Poems of Thomas
Gray. Eds. H.W. Starr and J.R. Hendrickson. London: Oxford University Press. 1966.
Print. 37 – 43.
Secondary Sources:
“Elegy.” Webster’s New World Dictionary. 3rd ed. 1995. Print.
Golden, Morris. Thomas Gray. New York: Twayne Publishers, Inc. 1964. Print.
Ketton-Cremer, Robert Wyndham. Thomas Gray, a Biography. Great Britain: Cambridge
University Press. 1955. Print.
---, Thomas Gray. London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1958. Print.
Koster, Jo. Thomas Gray. Winthrop University, n.d. Web. 23 Feb. 2011