Thomas Gray

• Born: December 26, 1716, London, England

• Died: July 30, 1771 (aged 54), Cambridge, England
• Notable Works: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
• Thomas Gray was an English poet, classical scholar and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge, best known for
his poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, published in 1751.
• While Gray is regarded as the foremost English-language poet of the mid-18th century, he was very self-critical and
published only thirteen poems during his lifetime and refused the post of Poet Laureate in 1757.
• He lived most of his life in Cambridge, and enjoyed travelling around Britain.
• He died in 1771 aged 54, after a short illness.
POETRY AND STYLE
• Gray was one of the least productive poets, and his collected works published during his lifetime amount to fewer
than 1,000 lines. He was so self-critical and fearful of failure that he published only thirteen poems during his lifetime.
However, he is regarded as the foremost English-language poet of the mid-18th century. In 1757, he was offered the
post of Poet Laureate, which he refused, and once wrote that he feared his collected works would be “mistaken for the
works of a flea".
• Gray’s poetry often combines traditional forms and poetic diction with new topics and modes of expression. A lot of
his poetry is concerned with the rejection of sexual desire. The figure of the poet in his poems is often a lonely,
alienated, and marginal one, and various muses or surrogate-mother figures are invoked for aid or guidance.
ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD
• Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is arguably Gray’s most celebrated piece of writing. It is thought that he
started writing this piece in 1742 following the death of West, but did not finish it until 1750.
• 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.
Theme: Death the over reaching is the main theme in Elegy Written in a country Churchyard, is the inevitable fate of
humanity regardless of wealth, power, and status.
SUMMARY
Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” presents the omniscient speaker who talks to the reader. First, he
stands alone in a graveyard deep in thought. While there, he thinks about the dead people buried there. The graveyard
referred to here is the graveyard of the church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire. The speaker contemplates the end of
human life throughout the poem. He remarks on the inevitability of death that every individual has to face.
LITERARY DEVICES

 Personification  Rhetorical question

 Alliteration  Euphemism Synecdoche
 Imagery  Metaphor
 Allusion  Onomatopoeia
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the poet, through the speaker, ends the elegy by saying that death is an inevitable event in this world.
Also, he says that man's efforts and his struggles to succeed in life comes to an end in death. Thus, death conquers
man regardless of his successes and/or failures in his endeavors during his life.
 HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
• Despite publishing very few poems in his lifetime, Gray is considered to be one of the most important English
literature poets of the eighteenth century.
• His poem Elegy on a Country Churchyard is universally seen as the highest achievement of eighteenth-century
Classicism, as well as a major precursor and inspiration to the style of Romanticism and Gothic writing.
Other Works of Thomas Gray:
• Ode on the Spring (written in 1742)
• On the Death of Richard West (written in 1742)
• Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes (written in 1747)
• Ode to a Distant Prospect of Eton College (written in 1747 and published anonymously)
• Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (written between 1745 and 1750)
• The Progress of Poesy: A Pindaric Ode (written between 1751 and 1754)
• The Bard: A Pindaric Ode (written between 1755 and 1757)
• The Fatal Sisters: An Ode (written in 1761)

William Blake
• William Blake (1757–1827), one of the greatest poets in the English language, also ranks among the most original
visual artists of the Romantic era. Born in London in November 28, 1757 into a working-class family with strong
nonconformist religious beliefs, Blake first studied art as a boy, at the drawing academy
• From early childhood, Blake spoke of having visions—at four he saw God “put his head to the window”; around age
nine, while walking through the countryside, he saw a tree filled with angels. Although his parents tried to discourage
him from “lying,” they did observe that he was different from his peers and did not force him to attend a conventional
school. Instead, he learned to read and write at home.
• At age ten, Blake expressed a wish to become a painter; so, his parents sent him to drawing school. Two years later,
Blake began writing poetry.
• Blake believed that his poetry could be read and understood by common people, but he was determined not to
sacrifice his vision in order to become popular.
• William Blake was notably influenced by writers such as Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare, and John Milton.
Since his death, he has inspired in turn countless other poets throughout the centuries.
FAMOUS POEMS
• ‘The Tyger’ - was published in 1794 in Songs of Experience. It is widely anthologized alongside ‘The Lamb’. The
poem questions the cruel elements of God’s creation, the tiger being the main example. Throughout, the child tries to
reconcile the tiger with the kinder, softer elements to be found in the world.
• ‘The Lamb’ - is the companion piece to Blake’s ‘The Tyger’. It uses the lamb as an image of God’s goodness and
his overarching will. A child is addressing the title animal throughout the poem. They speak to the creature and takes
note of its soft wool and the simple noises it makes.
• ‘A Poison Tree’ - was also published in 1794 in William Blake’s Songs of Experience. Blake’s speaker considers
what anger is, and two different ways of confronting it. One might move past it by speaking about its cause.
Alternatively, the anger takes root through the image of a tree that unfortunately bears poisoned apples.
• ‘The Sick Rose’ - should be read with an eye on the way that the extended metaphor at the heart of the poem works.
The speaker compares the rose, a symbol of nature, beauty, and fragility to a woman’s innocence or chastity. The
value of a relationship with a woman was defined by whether or not that woman has had sex. When the rose is ‘sick’ it
has lost its purity or its virginity.
• ‘London’ - was published in Songs of Experience in 1794. It describes the difficulties of London life while the
speaker moves through the city. He travels to the River Thames and takes note of the solemn and resigned faces of his
fellow Londoners. There is a true pain hearts of men, women, and children.
WILLIAM BLAKE’S WRITING STYLE
• William Blake belongs to the period of Romantic poets. In his works, the features of Romanticism are marked
vividly. Like romantics, his poetry is largely based on subjectivity, imagination, expression, freedom of thought, and
the idealization of nature.
• Though the Romantic Movement officially started in the nineteenth with the publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1830,
William Blake shows blows of classicism in his poetry at the end of the 17th century. According to William Black,
any piece of art is an embodiment of the vision and imagination of the poet.
• Many writers of the 17th century, including William Blake, were greatly influenced by the French Revolution and
war between France and England. William Black was against the ancient ideals that were practiced in his time. He
composed his poem “There is no Natural Religion” and “All Religions are One” in hopes to bring change to the
spiritual life of the public. Unlike most people, Blake had a feeling that his spiritual life is dramatic, free, and not
consistent,
• The poetry and writing style of William Blake resembles the spirit of Romanticism. Imagination, mysticism,
idealization of childhood, humanitarian sympathies, love of liberty, and symbolism are the major features of his
poetry. He attributes great importance to these features in his poetry.
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
Blake’s poetry was not well received during his lifetime. At the time of his death, he had sold less than thirty copies of
Songs of Innocence. After Blake’s death, some of his manuscripts were burnt. This was due to the influence of
conservative members of that church that burned manuscripts that he deemed heretical. William Michael Rossetti also
burned works by Blake that he considered lacking in quality, and John Linnell erased sexual imagery from a number
of Blake’s drawings. His work remained neglected for almost a generation after his death and it was during the
Modernist period that this work began to influence a wider set of writers and artists, including William Butler Yeats.
Blake has become an important Romantic poet and is known for his views on class system, religion and issues such as
slavery, and he has continued to influence writers into the twentieth century.

Prepared by:
Krizzy Joyce E. Alacre
BSED English 2