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THEME OF PATHOS - ELEGY WRITTEN

IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD
The in the first phase of his life Thomas Gray wrote "Hymn to Adversity", "The Odes to
Spring" and "On a Distant Prospect of Eton College". These early poems reveal the poet's
melancholy bent of mind. In this second phase he came out with poems like "The Elegy Written in a
Country Churchyard', "The Progress of Poesy and the Bard',The poet in his third phase composed
poems like "The Fatal Sisters" and "The Descent of Odin'.

Gray’s “Elegy” is one of the best-known poems about death in all of European literature. The poem
presents the reflections of an observer, who passing by a churchyard out in the country, stops for a
moment to think about the significance of the strangers buried there.

The dominant theme of this poem is death. It deals with the death of the rude forefathers of
the village, death as a common occurrence in the world and the anticipated death of human being.
The forefathers of the village are lying buried in the ordinary graves, beneath the rough alms and
yew-trees. The graves are on the turf and very small. The ancestors of the villagers were buried long
ago. Now they sleep forever in their decaying graves which look like heaps of earth only. Gray
reflects not only on the untimely death of young people, but also on the death that comes after a
normal life span. Gray talks of youth who might be the poet himself, or his friend West, in whose
memory the poem has been written. In fact the shadow of death constantly hovers over the poem.

“Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.”

In the third stanza of the elegy the poet describes, "Save that from yonder ivy mantled tower, the
moping owl does to the moon complain," which demonstrates the night is approaching because
owls come out in the darkness of night or death, it also signifies the wealthy people because of the
mention of the ‘ivy-mantled tower’. This undoubtedly and naturally demonstrates the death of the
forefathers and the men being put to rest within their tombs. Also, the use of the term fore-fathers
seems to indicate that these men were from various walks of life - farmers, politicians, fathers, from
both classes, rich and poor.

The narrator tries to bring out the fundamental difference between the great and common
man when all lay side by side in their narrow cell. The idea is invoked from a Latin phrase
‘memento mori’ which states to all mankind, "Remember you must die”, a Latin phrase which states

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plainly to all mankind, "Remember that you must die." The speaker considers the fact that in death,
there is no difference between the great and the common people. He goes on to wonder if among
the lowly people buried in the churchyard, had there been any natural poets or politicians, whose
talents had simply never been discovered or nurtured. This thought leads him to praise the dead for
the honest, simple lives that they lived.

Then in the fourth stanza, Gray uses the churchyard scene to invoke important images: the
strength of the elms, death as symbolized by the graves and the comfort provided by the yews
giving shade to the bodies that sleep. The poet begins by reflecting on the death of the humble and
the lower class.
“Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap”

Gray has the ability to demonstrate the individual and the emotional issues behind death and dying,
and also to elevate the common man. In stanza five, he expresses how these forefathers will no
longer be roused from their lowly beds by the breeze of the morning, the swallow twittering, or the
cock echoing. They are dead and gone forever. He then highlights the fact that it does not matter if
one is rich or poor.

In stanza nine he vividly portray the factual truth that death comes to all - the wealthy and
the poor. Death doesn’t make any distinctions between the high and low. It is an unavoidable event
in everyman’s life. Death waits even for those who are proud of their noble birth, wealth, social
importance and beauty. So, proud and ambitious people should not hate these poor rustic people.
They lead simple lives which they spend in useful work. Death comes to all and so the poet
concludes that all paths, however glorious, lead only to the grave.

He compares the activities of the rich. It is likely that they would treat with contempt the
short and simple history of the poor. Gray asks them not to be proud of themselves because they
were ambitious and had achievements to their credit. Despite all their richness, pomp, power and
rank, all persons are to die one day. Death closes all. Gray tells them not to be proud of their big
monuments over their graves, while the poor have no such things. The poet laments that it is not the
mistakes of the poor that they did not have any such monuments over their grave yards.

In the nineteenth stanza of the elegy, the poet describes the life led by the dead forefathers.
According to him, they never tried to give up the quiet tenor of their life which was lived in
aloofness from the maddening struggles of people in this world. They continuously enjoyed a
peaceful course of life in the quite seclusion and peace. The poet thus points to the unambitious life
of the poor as contrasted with the life of the rich and great, whose lives are usually full of

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ambitions, luxury and hectic activities. The poor never cherish high aspirations or ambition and do
not hanker after fame and prosperity, because everybody is doomed to death.

Gray's "Elegy" isn't just about death, and it isn't just doom and gloom. It's about the fear of
being forgotten after you're gone. Gray looks at the graves of common folks, and instead of just
shrugging and figuring that their lives were not worth remembering, he takes the time to think about
what made them tick. And apparently this poem hit a sympathetic chord within the eighteenth-
century readers.

Shakespeare and Omar Khayam spoke of time's ruin and death's inevitable shadow on life in
their ways; Gray says so in his rhetoric, no less effectively. The superb musical felicity of “ And
drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds”, the inspired perfection of 'Far from the madding crowd's
ignoble strife’ and the nostalgic expression in Nor cast one longing, lingering look behind'
must haunt the mind of every reader. The Elegy happily fuses the descriptive and the philosophical
elements, and also achieves what I.A. Richards noted, That triumph of an exquisitely
adjusted tone'.

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Gray's Elegy -Objective and Personal Poetry

(ADD THESE PARTS TO THE MASTER ANSWER OF ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY
CHURCHYARD-IN THE THEME OF PATHOS ANSWER)

INTRODUCTION

In his early poems like ‘Ode on the Spring’ and ‘Hymn to Adversity’, Gray
expressed exclusively general ideas, thoughts and feelings in keeping with
the neo-classic convention of his time. Even ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of
Eton College’, the theme of which was related to the happy days the poet had
spent in Eton, did not betray any personal appeal of a pure lyric, such as readers
find in Romantic poets like Wordsworth and Shelley. ‘Elegy Written in a
CountryChurchyard’, however, reveals, on close scrutiny, an attempt to come
out of this shackle of convention, not openly, but somewhat implicitly.
On the surface it is a general elegy on the dead rustics who lived an
humble and obscure life, and then slept their eternal sleep in obscure tombs
in the churchyard. The story is told by an objective narrator, and a flavour
of universality is cast on the poem through the assertion of the truth that
death is the inevitable end for all, whether rich and powerful or weak and
poor; and that after death, no return to life is possible.

CONCLUSION

Graham Hough has noted, though Gray in his own time and
social conditions could not be frankly subjective like Shelley in his lyrics (e.
g. Stanzas Written in Dejection), and had to keep up poetic decorum, he has
discovered in this poem an indirect means to respond to his urge for self-
revelation.Since both dignity and poetic decorum of the eighteenth century
England forbade one to complain individually about one's pain and sorrow,
Gray had to express such purely personal emotions by such ingeniously indirect
means.The art involved in it got classified much later in the twentieth century
in T. S. Eliot's demand for depersonalisation on the part of a creative artist,
specially a writer.

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