Thomas Gray

“ For the universal aspect of Gray's lament, however, it was highly apt as compared with the less majestic octosyllabic line, hitherto normal in this genre. For years after Gray's great success, however, most elegies, if in quatrain form, followed Gray's quatrain in manner, whether or not their subjects demanded the stately line.
The reasons why Gray is almost a poet of only one poem are not far to seek. He did not covet applause, and apart from melancholy his own emotions were too private to be published. In the "Elegy" he is true to himself and to the spirit of his age—perhaps of most ages. ”

“ The poem is couched in universals: Gray writes in "a" country churchyard, and the actual Stoke Poges, dear and lovely as it doubtless was to Gray, clings to the fame of the poem almost by accident. And yet, by a sort of paradox, this "universal" poem in its setting and mood is completely English. One could go too far from home for examples of distinction—for the polar stars of the rude forefathers—just as one could err by excess of "commonplace" reflections. ”

“ Here, too, are no tremblings of hope, no sound confidence in the "average" man, such as Gray surprisingly glimpses. One begins to suspect that it is more necessary to be subtle in evocations of despair than in those of hope, even if the hope is tremulous. The mood Gray sought required no obvious subtlety. ”

“ Th' Applause of list'ning Senates to command,
The Threats of Pain and Ruin to despise,
To scatter Plenty o'er a smiling Land,
And read their Hist'ry in a Nation's Eyes
Their Lot forbad: nor circumscrib'd alone
Their growing Virtues, but their Crimes confin'd; ”

“ For them no more the blazing Hearth shall burn,
Or busy Houswife ply her Evening Care:
No Children run to lisp their Sire's Return,
Or climb his Knees the envied Kiss to share. ”

“ Universality, clarity, incisive lapidary diction—these qualities may be somewhat staled in praise of the "classical" style, yet it is precisely in these traits that the "Elegy" proves most nobly. The artificial figures of rhetorical arrangement that are so omnipresent in the antitheses, chiasmuses, parallelisms, etc., of Pope and his school are in Gray's best quatrains unobtrusive or even infrequent. ”

“ The rude forefathers are not primarily presented as underprivileged. Though poverty-stricken and ignorant, they are happy in family life and jocund in the field. "Nature is nature wherever placed," as the intellectuals of Gray's time loved to say, and the powers of the village fathers, potentially, equal the greatest ”

“ There scatter'd oft, the earliest of ye Year
By hands unseen, are Show'rs of Violets found;
The Red-breast loves to build & warble there,
And little Footsteps lightly print the Ground. ”

“ Let not Ambition mock their useful Toil,
Their homely Joys and Destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful Smile,
The short and simple Annals of the Poor. ”

“ Although in this epitaph we may seem to be concerned with an individual, we do well to note that the youth to fortune and fame unknown, whose great "bounty" was only a tear, is as completely anonymous as the ploughman or the rude forefathers.
The somber aspects of evening are perhaps more steadily preserved by Gray than by his contemporaries. From Milton to Joseph Warton all poets had made their ploughman unwearied as (to quote Warton) ”

“ He told Walpole that Dodsley must "print it without any Interval between the Stanza's, because the Sense is in some Places continued beyond them." In the Egerton MS Gray had written the poem with no breaks to set off quatrains, but in the earlier MS (Eton College) , where the poem is entitled, "Stanza's, wrote in a Country Church-Yard," the quatrains are spaced in normal fashion. The injunction shows Gray's sensitiveness as to metrical form. He had called the poem an Elegy only after urging by Mason, and he possibly doubted if his metre was "soft" enough for true elegy. ”

“ The lowing Herd winds slowly o'er the Lea,
The Plow-man homeward plods his weary Way,
And leaves the World to Darkness, and to me. ”

“ Now fades the glimmering Landscape on the Sight,
And all the Air a solemn Stillness holds;
Save where the Beetle wheels his droning Flight,
And drowsy Tinklings lull the distant Folds. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Full many a Gem of purest Ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd Caves of Ocean bear:
Full many a Flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its Sweetness on the desart Air. ”

“ For who to dumb Forgetfulness a Prey,
This pleasing anxious Being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm Precincts of the chearful Day,
Nor cast one longing ling'ring Look behind! ”

“ 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 sooth the dull cold Ear of Death! ”

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“ Pursue the silent Tenour of thy Doom.
"And here," comments Mason, "the Poem was originally intended to conclude, before the happy idea of the hoary-headed Swain, &c. suggested itself to him." To reconstitute the poem with this original ending gives an interesting structure. The first three quatrains evoke the fall of darkness; four stanzas follow presenting the rude forefathers in their narrow graves; eleven quatrains follow in reproach of Ambition, Grandeur, Pride, et al., for failure to realize the high merit of humility. ”

“ Here rests his Head upon the Lap of Earth
A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown:
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble Birth,
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own. ”

“ There are perhaps better evocations of similar moods, but not of this precise mood. Shakespeare's poignant Sonnet LXXIII ("That time of year") , which suggests no hope, may be one. Blake's "Nurse's Song" is, in contrast, subtly tinged with modernistic disillusion ”

“ 'One Morn I miss'd him on the custom'd Hill,
'Along the Heath, and near his fav'rite Tree;
'Another came; nor yet beside the Rill,
'Nor up the Lawn, nor at the Wood was he. ”

“ Cato [who] with dauntless Breast
The little Tyrant of his Fields withstood; ”

“ Nor cast one longing ling'ring Look behind! ”