What do you think?
Rate this book
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
THIS 6 PAGE ARTICLE WAS EXTRACTED FROM THE Master Thoughts of Master Minds in Poem, Prose and Pencil, by Thomas Gray. To purchase the entire book, please order ISBN 0766101495.
64 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1751
22 people are currently reading
1038 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 108 reviews
March 31, 2022
Gray took it back to the natural surroundings, rustic imagery, countryside landscape and to the human soul as well. I 'studied' this poem during my MA. I read it after my MA. There's a huge difference between studying and reading a poem. Both have certain pros and cons. I would suggest reading this poem if you want to feel its natural beauty of it. Life and death in a single poem, both served raw. Gray's art could not translate into more. However, this one has immortalised him (at least among the literary aware population).
June 26, 2016
This poem has touched my soul.
November 4, 2020
(This review is for the Phoenix 60p paperback of ‘Elegy in a Country Churchyard and Other writings’ by Thomas Gray).
This small paperback provides a good introduction to Gray’s work and gives glimpses of the descriptive and atmospheric elements beloved by Wordsworth and the early Romantic poets. The title piece is by far the most memorable, aside from the often overlooked and memorable small masterpiece entitled ‘ On a Favourite Cat, drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes.’
This small paperback provides a good introduction to Gray’s work and gives glimpses of the descriptive and atmospheric elements beloved by Wordsworth and the early Romantic poets. The title piece is by far the most memorable, aside from the often overlooked and memorable small masterpiece entitled ‘ On a Favourite Cat, drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes.’
November 30, 2020
Required reading. I read the version from The Norton Anthology of English Literature, Vol. C: The Restoration & the Eighteenth Century
March 6, 2019
A song for the unsung.
Full many a Flower is born
To blush unseen
This poem, very famous in it’s day, is a beautiful recognition of the great people who simply live amazing heroic lives in obscurity.
(Free on Project Gutenberg)
Full many a Flower is born
To blush unseen
This poem, very famous in it’s day, is a beautiful recognition of the great people who simply live amazing heroic lives in obscurity.
(Free on Project Gutenberg)
November 17, 2021
Mini review:
The 18th century was wild, especially regarding the literary scene.
The elegy written in a country churchyard has two central ideas: the Inevitability and universality of death and the value of commemorating the lives of the dead. It’s a meditation on death and in a way, a celebration of equality, it’s a humanist memento mori.
Final thoughts: I really liked the themes and the way Gray formed them in writing, however, it’s not exactly the best poetic work that I have read so far.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reading one of the poems on the extended reading list for a course I finished 2 years ago, on a rainy October afternoon is such a mood. Review to come.
The 18th century was wild, especially regarding the literary scene.
The elegy written in a country churchyard has two central ideas: the Inevitability and universality of death and the value of commemorating the lives of the dead. It’s a meditation on death and in a way, a celebration of equality, it’s a humanist memento mori.
Final thoughts: I really liked the themes and the way Gray formed them in writing, however, it’s not exactly the best poetic work that I have read so far.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reading one of the poems on the extended reading list for a course I finished 2 years ago, on a rainy October afternoon is such a mood. Review to come.
September 28, 2023
Oh, whoops. Forgot to shelve this under "read" a few days ago.
Anyway, the only reason why I read it was because it was one of the assigned readings for this week.
To be honest, I didn't get anything out of it; although, admittedly, it's just a tiny bit better than Voltaire's Candidewhich I'm struggling to get through still but not by much. Really, the only reason why it's better is because it's short. In fact, that's why I was able to finish it fairly quickly after starting it.
Overall, in my opinion, it's like a 1.25 out of 5 stars.
Anyway, the only reason why I read it was because it was one of the assigned readings for this week.
To be honest, I didn't get anything out of it; although, admittedly, it's just a tiny bit better than Voltaire's Candide
Overall, in my opinion, it's like a 1.25 out of 5 stars.
December 1, 2019
This was my father's book An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, The Artists' Edition by Thomas Gray and published in 1892 that contains beautiful engravings of the natural setting of this poem.
November 1, 2015
some really lovely imagery
October 10, 2017
I’ll admit that I do not consider myself a “poetry person.” But, Jasmine loves this poem and even went as far as to recommend it to me on this site. So, I figured I could look up a pdf real quick and give it a try. When I took a moment to think about what was being said, it really was a touching poem - I definitely had to read a couple stanzas more than once, and look up a couple words, but it wasn’t bad. I suppose poetry just isn’t really my “thing.” 3.5 stars overall
May 20, 2022
Ever since my teenage days, my educators have been telling me that Gray’s Elegy is the most renowned single poem in English literature.
Many of its expressions have become domestic words and some have even attained the place of proverbs.
This poem moves on a high level of nourishing reflection on the realities of life.
It is classic in its subject matter, in its worldwide appeal, in the acquiesce it receives from men of all sorts and conditions, as well as in its chiselled faultlessness of phrase and immaculate music.
Could we spare a moment and analyse the cause that lie behind its esteem?
At the very beginning the poet draws an atmosphere which helps to draw out overcast reflections from the poet’s mind. The lonesome churchyard scene when ‘the glimmering landscape’ at twilight slowly vanishes from view and when the church-bell at evening bids adieu to the ‘parting day’ accurately prepares him to contemplate over the fate of the humble villagers who lie buried in the nearly graves.
In the ‘solemn stillness’ of the neglected place at becomes natural for the poet that ‘For them no more the blazing hearth shall hum / Or busy housewife ply her evening care’.
Such an ambiance that raises sombre thoughts on human fate is sure to make an appeal to the insightful mind. Accordingly it turns out to be one of the charms of this poem.
The poem is also distinguished for the disparity drawn between the country and the town — between the straightforward life of the villagers and that towns-people full of clatter, fight and impediments.
The country is marked by tranquility and isolation … It is close to nature with ‘rugged clues’ and ‘yew tree’s shade’, with the twittering’ of swallows and’ ‘drowsy tinkling’ of bells of sheep kept in ‘distant folds’, with woods and babbling brooks.
The town, on the other hand, is full of blare and dissension, of chrurches with long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults and shrines of lavishness and arrogance, and of people busy in the collection of riches and accomplishment of grandeur.
The life of the unassuming villagers and that of the rich and powerful are also based on contrast.
The former live for away from the town, remain engaged in practical toil and try to follow the instructions of the holy book in everyday life.
They lead an honest life and do not allow their ‘sober wishes’ to go astray. The latter live in the very heart of ignoble strife’ depending on others’ labour for their fuel.
They take up bloody sports such as hunting for their pastime. They do not hesitate to stain their hands with their countrymen’s blood for achieving their selfish ends.
Therefore they suffer from ‘pangs’ arising out of repression of what they know to be openly ingenuous or forthrightly reprehensible. They also resort to obsequiousness for monetary benefits.
The keen observation and the sharp correctness with which Gray depicts the dissimilarity between the country and the town, between the life of the poor villagers and that of the rich town-men leaves a subterranean impression in the reader’s mind and serves as another factor for the poem’s popularity.
The poem deals with the life of the poor and their ‘obscure’ lot. This is a happy departure from the artificial manner of the eighteenth century poets who sang only of the rich and the proud.
The delineation of the patients is done with; care and sympathy. They are contented with simple things / of life as they have no high aspirations to fulfil.
Their life is one of hard labour and of peace and domestic happiness. They can construct all but ‘frail memorial’ over the ‘mouldering’ graves of their ancestors.
The poet asks the ambitious and the proud not to look down upon the poor agriculturists for their humble condition and low birth. It is not that they had no potency. In fact they had the potency of greatness on them. But it could not come to fruition because of poverty which kept them illiterate, ‘repressed their noble rage’, and ‘froze the genial current of the soul’.
The poet, further, reminds them that ‘the paths of glory lead but to the grave’ and that by no means they can ‘soothe the dull cold ear of Death’. This delicate handling of the case of the poor and the neglected is another factor that supports the fame of the poem.
Our argument here can be buttressed by what W.H. Hudson has said in the following:
‘In the tender feeling shown for ‘the rude forefathers of the hamlet’ and the sense Of the human value’ of the little things that are written in ‘the short and simple annals of the poor’, we see poetry, under the influence of the spreading democratic spirit, reaching out to include humble aspects of life hitherto ignored.’
We may, thus, say that through its concerned and fond treatment of the poor who form the majority of mankind the poem has succeeded in making a universal appeal.
The thoughts and feelings expressed in the poem have no new or original points in them. The idea that poverty is responsible for the villagers’ illiteracy and their lot for the no fulfilment of their possibilities and the sentiment that ‘some pious drops the closing eye requires’ and that the departing soul casts ‘Oe longing lingering book behind’ are in no way extraordinary or unique save in their expression.
Indeed the poem has many bejewelled phrases and melodious expressions that turn it into a marvellous specimen of English poetry.
A judgement use of figures like metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, oxymoron, periphrasis, personification, transferred epithet, inversion and rhetorical question has highlighted its artistic value to a great extent.
Appropriate use of alliteration, euphemism and onomatopoeia, again, had added to the poem a delicate music which our mind finds to be most pleasing.
Some expressions like ‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen’ or ‘Can storied urn or animated bust / Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?’ or ‘For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey!. ..ever resigned! Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, / Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?’ ever cut a yawning intuition on the reader’s mind, and introduce an air of freshness and novelty that transform the Elegy into one of the most admired poems in English literature
Many of its expressions have become domestic words and some have even attained the place of proverbs.
This poem moves on a high level of nourishing reflection on the realities of life.
It is classic in its subject matter, in its worldwide appeal, in the acquiesce it receives from men of all sorts and conditions, as well as in its chiselled faultlessness of phrase and immaculate music.
Could we spare a moment and analyse the cause that lie behind its esteem?
At the very beginning the poet draws an atmosphere which helps to draw out overcast reflections from the poet’s mind. The lonesome churchyard scene when ‘the glimmering landscape’ at twilight slowly vanishes from view and when the church-bell at evening bids adieu to the ‘parting day’ accurately prepares him to contemplate over the fate of the humble villagers who lie buried in the nearly graves.
In the ‘solemn stillness’ of the neglected place at becomes natural for the poet that ‘For them no more the blazing hearth shall hum / Or busy housewife ply her evening care’.
Such an ambiance that raises sombre thoughts on human fate is sure to make an appeal to the insightful mind. Accordingly it turns out to be one of the charms of this poem.
The poem is also distinguished for the disparity drawn between the country and the town — between the straightforward life of the villagers and that towns-people full of clatter, fight and impediments.
The country is marked by tranquility and isolation … It is close to nature with ‘rugged clues’ and ‘yew tree’s shade’, with the twittering’ of swallows and’ ‘drowsy tinkling’ of bells of sheep kept in ‘distant folds’, with woods and babbling brooks.
The town, on the other hand, is full of blare and dissension, of chrurches with long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults and shrines of lavishness and arrogance, and of people busy in the collection of riches and accomplishment of grandeur.
The life of the unassuming villagers and that of the rich and powerful are also based on contrast.
The former live for away from the town, remain engaged in practical toil and try to follow the instructions of the holy book in everyday life.
They lead an honest life and do not allow their ‘sober wishes’ to go astray. The latter live in the very heart of ignoble strife’ depending on others’ labour for their fuel.
They take up bloody sports such as hunting for their pastime. They do not hesitate to stain their hands with their countrymen’s blood for achieving their selfish ends.
Therefore they suffer from ‘pangs’ arising out of repression of what they know to be openly ingenuous or forthrightly reprehensible. They also resort to obsequiousness for monetary benefits.
The keen observation and the sharp correctness with which Gray depicts the dissimilarity between the country and the town, between the life of the poor villagers and that of the rich town-men leaves a subterranean impression in the reader’s mind and serves as another factor for the poem’s popularity.
The poem deals with the life of the poor and their ‘obscure’ lot. This is a happy departure from the artificial manner of the eighteenth century poets who sang only of the rich and the proud.
The delineation of the patients is done with; care and sympathy. They are contented with simple things / of life as they have no high aspirations to fulfil.
Their life is one of hard labour and of peace and domestic happiness. They can construct all but ‘frail memorial’ over the ‘mouldering’ graves of their ancestors.
The poet asks the ambitious and the proud not to look down upon the poor agriculturists for their humble condition and low birth. It is not that they had no potency. In fact they had the potency of greatness on them. But it could not come to fruition because of poverty which kept them illiterate, ‘repressed their noble rage’, and ‘froze the genial current of the soul’.
The poet, further, reminds them that ‘the paths of glory lead but to the grave’ and that by no means they can ‘soothe the dull cold ear of Death’. This delicate handling of the case of the poor and the neglected is another factor that supports the fame of the poem.
Our argument here can be buttressed by what W.H. Hudson has said in the following:
‘In the tender feeling shown for ‘the rude forefathers of the hamlet’ and the sense Of the human value’ of the little things that are written in ‘the short and simple annals of the poor’, we see poetry, under the influence of the spreading democratic spirit, reaching out to include humble aspects of life hitherto ignored.’
We may, thus, say that through its concerned and fond treatment of the poor who form the majority of mankind the poem has succeeded in making a universal appeal.
The thoughts and feelings expressed in the poem have no new or original points in them. The idea that poverty is responsible for the villagers’ illiteracy and their lot for the no fulfilment of their possibilities and the sentiment that ‘some pious drops the closing eye requires’ and that the departing soul casts ‘Oe longing lingering book behind’ are in no way extraordinary or unique save in their expression.
Indeed the poem has many bejewelled phrases and melodious expressions that turn it into a marvellous specimen of English poetry.
A judgement use of figures like metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, oxymoron, periphrasis, personification, transferred epithet, inversion and rhetorical question has highlighted its artistic value to a great extent.
Appropriate use of alliteration, euphemism and onomatopoeia, again, had added to the poem a delicate music which our mind finds to be most pleasing.
Some expressions like ‘Full many a flower is born to blush unseen’ or ‘Can storied urn or animated bust / Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?’ or ‘For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey!. ..ever resigned! Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day, / Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?’ ever cut a yawning intuition on the reader’s mind, and introduce an air of freshness and novelty that transform the Elegy into one of the most admired poems in English literature
October 22, 2012
Thomas Gray was a really strange man. He firstly writes this elegy to remember those who won't be remembered (the common people) and then reacts rather unpleasantly to the sudden attention this poem got. Maybe he would rather like to keep the magic of his 'umremembered' being 'unremembered'? But then, why write about them in the first place? The irony is that nowadays, Gray is mostly remembered because of this poem about the unremembered. I still don't quite follow his reaction on the poem's success.
Anyhow, about the poem itself: as you may see by the stars I've given, it hasn't reached to me a lot. I loved the darkish atmosphere it conveys in the beginning, but... other than that, I was expecting much better. I didn't really connect to the ones Gray was writing in memory of, even though I know most of us end up like that.
Anyhow, about the poem itself: as you may see by the stars I've given, it hasn't reached to me a lot. I loved the darkish atmosphere it conveys in the beginning, but... other than that, I was expecting much better. I didn't really connect to the ones Gray was writing in memory of, even though I know most of us end up like that.
November 4, 2014
In the end, we all die. Wealth nor fame nor prestige will keep you from turning to dust. Monuments or statues mean little to the imp of Time. But at that time of death, we will either be embraced by our Father or rejected by Him for all eternity. He cares not for good deeds and respectability. Good works mean little to Him. Soften your heart. Understand the magnitude of your decision. Accept or reject, the choice is yours. Such a powerful thought.
August 15, 2017
I realize that this is supposed to be one of the greatest poems ever written in the English language, but I just wasn't impressed.
January 30, 2018
Inspired. A poem worth memorizing. Gray paints the true picture of life as seen from death’s perspective. Additional poems are likewise perceptive.
July 16, 2023
Those who may wonder why Gray’s Elegy has been considered (in the past, regrettably) such a seminal work have only to take the few minutes required to read it the first time (and then, in all likelihood, spend a number of hours going over it and savoring it again). Every one of its 32 quatrains is a well-polished gem. By that, I don’t mean that it’s contrived in any way, but one can sense that Thomas Gray took great care in thinking it through and put a lot of thought into every word. This is the work of a classical scholar who perceived his contemporary world in a deeply thoughtful way; his values are timeless, his grasp of the essentials faultless. It’s scarcely surprising that Thomas Hardy chose a phrase from one of these stanzas, one where Gray paid tribute the honorable life of a simple peasant, as title for one of his best novels:
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.
The edition of this work that I’ve acquired contains five of Gray’s best-known poems, along with three by his contemporary, Oliver Goldsmith — and what a bonus that is! All eight of the poems in this slim volume are works of the highest order. I find Goldsmith’s “The Deserted Village” especially moving; it’s a lament for the demise of a rural village, but (like most of Wendell Berry’s novels) it’s really a cri de coeur for the loss of a way of life and the precious values that went with it. His vision of a man (himself, perhaps) hoping to spend his final days in such a place is exceedingly poignant:
But on he moves to meet his latter end,
Angels around befriending virtue’s friend;
Bends to the grave with unperceiv’d decay,
While resignation gently slopes the way;
And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past.
How wonderful to contemplate such an end!
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.
The edition of this work that I’ve acquired contains five of Gray’s best-known poems, along with three by his contemporary, Oliver Goldsmith — and what a bonus that is! All eight of the poems in this slim volume are works of the highest order. I find Goldsmith’s “The Deserted Village” especially moving; it’s a lament for the demise of a rural village, but (like most of Wendell Berry’s novels) it’s really a cri de coeur for the loss of a way of life and the precious values that went with it. His vision of a man (himself, perhaps) hoping to spend his final days in such a place is exceedingly poignant:
But on he moves to meet his latter end,
Angels around befriending virtue’s friend;
Bends to the grave with unperceiv’d decay,
While resignation gently slopes the way;
And, all his prospects brightening to the last,
His heaven commences ere the world be past.
How wonderful to contemplate such an end!
November 27, 2021
Ooit was Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard één van de populairste gedichten in de Engelse taal: iedere Engelse knaap en deerne moest Gray’s verzen op school vroeger uit het hoofd leren.
Gray schreef het gedicht ergens een 1750, vermoedelijk geïnspireerd door de dood van de dichter Richard West. Interessant detail voor de liefhebbers van Gothic Novels: zonder Horace Walpole hadden we er misschien nooit van kunnen genieten. Gray was immers helemaal niet van plan om het te publiceren, maar stuurde het naar zijn vriend Walpole—beruchte verzamelaar van kunst en antiek, kasteelheer van Strawberry Hill en de schrijver van de eerste Gothic Novel The Castle of Otranto in 1764—die het op zijn beurt doorgaf aan verschillende leden van de Londense literaire wereld. Om een illegale publicatie van het gedicht in een tijdschrift te voorkomen, was Gray genoodzaakt zijn kleinood alsnog te publiceren en de rest is uiteraard geschiedenis.
Over de meesterlijke compositie van wil ik het hier niet hebben om de eenvoudige reden dat ik niet de man ben om dergelijke bellettrie te bekritiseren, wel wil ik graag een bijzonder mooie editie van het werk onder uw aandacht brengen die onlangs door Bodleian Library Publishing werd uitgegeven. Elegy is een erg visueel poëem, wat menig kunstenaar er door de jaren heen toe heeft aangezet om het te voorzien van verluchtingen van allerlei slag. Het bekendst zijn ongetwijfeld de aquarellen van William Blake, maar deze editie blaast nieuw leven in de houtgravures die Agnes Miller Parker er in 1938 voor ontwierp. Haar art deco-illustraties zijn het gedicht meer dan waardig en benadrukken het mythische karakter van de tekst. De uitgever bracht het geheel erg zorgvuldig tot leven met een mooie, harde kaft en met een binnenwerk dat een typografieliefhebber zoals ik enige vorm van gezonde opwinding bezorgt.
De inleiding van dichteres Carol Rumens is jammer genoeg totaal overbodig, leest vaak artyfarty en is soms ronduit belachelijk, zoals in de volgende zin: “Parker’s many depictions of gravestones, literally ‘en-grave-ings’ poignantly record the stonecutter’s struggles with the art of inscription.” Of hoe een flauwe woordspeling in combinatie met een pseudo-intellectuele analogie die kant noch wal raakt danig op de lachspieren kan werken.
Dat gezegd zijnde, is deze uitgave er vooral om kennis te maken met de pionier van de Graveyard School en de tot de verbeelding sprekende grav(f)-ures van Agnes Miller Parker. Een klein boek over grootse melancholie dat u niet mag missen.
K.R. Valgaeren
www.krvalgaeren.com
Gray schreef het gedicht ergens een 1750, vermoedelijk geïnspireerd door de dood van de dichter Richard West. Interessant detail voor de liefhebbers van Gothic Novels: zonder Horace Walpole hadden we er misschien nooit van kunnen genieten. Gray was immers helemaal niet van plan om het te publiceren, maar stuurde het naar zijn vriend Walpole—beruchte verzamelaar van kunst en antiek, kasteelheer van Strawberry Hill en de schrijver van de eerste Gothic Novel The Castle of Otranto in 1764—die het op zijn beurt doorgaf aan verschillende leden van de Londense literaire wereld. Om een illegale publicatie van het gedicht in een tijdschrift te voorkomen, was Gray genoodzaakt zijn kleinood alsnog te publiceren en de rest is uiteraard geschiedenis.
Over de meesterlijke compositie van wil ik het hier niet hebben om de eenvoudige reden dat ik niet de man ben om dergelijke bellettrie te bekritiseren, wel wil ik graag een bijzonder mooie editie van het werk onder uw aandacht brengen die onlangs door Bodleian Library Publishing werd uitgegeven. Elegy is een erg visueel poëem, wat menig kunstenaar er door de jaren heen toe heeft aangezet om het te voorzien van verluchtingen van allerlei slag. Het bekendst zijn ongetwijfeld de aquarellen van William Blake, maar deze editie blaast nieuw leven in de houtgravures die Agnes Miller Parker er in 1938 voor ontwierp. Haar art deco-illustraties zijn het gedicht meer dan waardig en benadrukken het mythische karakter van de tekst. De uitgever bracht het geheel erg zorgvuldig tot leven met een mooie, harde kaft en met een binnenwerk dat een typografieliefhebber zoals ik enige vorm van gezonde opwinding bezorgt.
De inleiding van dichteres Carol Rumens is jammer genoeg totaal overbodig, leest vaak artyfarty en is soms ronduit belachelijk, zoals in de volgende zin: “Parker’s many depictions of gravestones, literally ‘en-grave-ings’ poignantly record the stonecutter’s struggles with the art of inscription.” Of hoe een flauwe woordspeling in combinatie met een pseudo-intellectuele analogie die kant noch wal raakt danig op de lachspieren kan werken.
Dat gezegd zijnde, is deze uitgave er vooral om kennis te maken met de pionier van de Graveyard School en de tot de verbeelding sprekende grav(f)-ures van Agnes Miller Parker. Een klein boek over grootse melancholie dat u niet mag missen.
K.R. Valgaeren
www.krvalgaeren.com
July 10, 2018
Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib'd alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,
This is poem that inspired the title of Far From The Madding Crowd and is is slow to start but incredibly beautiful :)
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin'd;
Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,
This is poem that inspired the title of Far From The Madding Crowd and is is slow to start but incredibly beautiful :)
June 1, 2017
قرأتها بترجمة الشاعرة نازك الملائكة، تحت عنوان "مرثية في مقبرة ريفية"
والقصيدة في الأصل للشاعر الإنجليزي توماس غرَيّ وهو أحد شعراء القرن الثامن عشر ..
هي أشبه بامتداد لشعر نازك الغارق بالنزعة الرومانتيكية، حيث يغلب عليه التغني والتأمل الحزين ..
والقصيدة في الأصل للشاعر الإنجليزي توماس غرَيّ وهو أحد شعراء القرن الثامن عشر ..
هي أشبه بامتداد لشعر نازك الغارق بالنزعة الرومانتيكية، حيث يغلب عليه التغني والتأمل الحزين ..
September 2, 2018
The paths of glory lead but to grave!!!
simply defines our life
simply defines our life
December 20, 2022
Beautiful and touching. What a great poem!
May 13, 2024
enough to make a grown person cry
Read
June 1, 2025academic reading
March 12, 2017
Personal Response:
Poetry is not my favorite thing to read. I kind of struggled through this poem, but I do think I took away the main point the author was trying to get across to me. This poem really made me think about what was going on. Unlike many books, this plot wasn't spoon fed to me.
Plot:
I think the main plot of this poem was that the speaker was in a churchyard near dark. He/She can't help but notice how spooky it is to look at the gravestones in the yard. Looking closer at the stones, the speaker tries to imagine what kind of deaths these people endured. He/She comes up with all sorts of stories to try to describe the deaths of these people buried in the churchyard. As a final thought from the speaker, he/she thinks about what another person would think of his/her life when they meditate by the gravestones in the same way the speaker is doing.
Characterization:
As far as I could tell, there were no major characters that played a role in this poem.
Recommendation:
Poetry lovers would absolutely love this poem. This is not a gender specific poem, in my opinion. It does take a little bit of thinking to decipher the main point of the poem, so the reader has to have some patience when reading this poem.
Poetry is not my favorite thing to read. I kind of struggled through this poem, but I do think I took away the main point the author was trying to get across to me. This poem really made me think about what was going on. Unlike many books, this plot wasn't spoon fed to me.
Plot:
I think the main plot of this poem was that the speaker was in a churchyard near dark. He/She can't help but notice how spooky it is to look at the gravestones in the yard. Looking closer at the stones, the speaker tries to imagine what kind of deaths these people endured. He/She comes up with all sorts of stories to try to describe the deaths of these people buried in the churchyard. As a final thought from the speaker, he/she thinks about what another person would think of his/her life when they meditate by the gravestones in the same way the speaker is doing.
Characterization:
As far as I could tell, there were no major characters that played a role in this poem.
Recommendation:
Poetry lovers would absolutely love this poem. This is not a gender specific poem, in my opinion. It does take a little bit of thinking to decipher the main point of the poem, so the reader has to have some patience when reading this poem.
June 3, 2022
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
Read
March 12, 2023thx gia for the reminder I could add this to my challenge // read for ENGL 415
December 28, 2012
Thomas Gray was his worst critic. He only suffered not much more than a dozen of his poems to be published in his life. This has been among my favourite poems of all time.
His Elegy, is considered to be among the best written English pieces of literature. For almost a decade he worked on this poem. The most astonishing detail that I witnessed within this poem, is later on, he reckons himself at rest with "the rude forefathers of hamlet," and thus places himself, in reality, alongside his mother and aunt, whom are buried in Stoke Poages Churchyard, in Buckinghamshire.
There are a couple of manuscripts of this work. I've read both. Both are well received, by me. I have memorised all 32 stanzas or 128 lines of this poem. Those "Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade," allowed him to tackle the issues of the wealthy and their reaction to the poor, which he witnessed in his lifetime: "Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault," and "The boast of heraldry the pomp of power. . . awaits alike th' inevitable hour, the paths of glory lead but to the grave."
I love this tackling of issues. Wealthy bragged about their heraldry, or family's coat of arms etc. The poor could not. I feel like with Gray's mistreatment by his father, he suddenly saw things so much differently. So much so, that everyone was going to die in a similar way, no matter how wealthy or poor, both were going to die.
Then he adds himself to the churchyard. A kindred spirit maybe inquires of Gray to a hoary headed swain, whom relates the story to him, and asks him to read the lay (poem/epitaph as the swain is not literate—common in his day) and finishes with his own epitaph. A great poem of literature I and my small family have studied doing homeschooling! One of the greatest! This is an outstanding poem!:):)
His Elegy, is considered to be among the best written English pieces of literature. For almost a decade he worked on this poem. The most astonishing detail that I witnessed within this poem, is later on, he reckons himself at rest with "the rude forefathers of hamlet," and thus places himself, in reality, alongside his mother and aunt, whom are buried in Stoke Poages Churchyard, in Buckinghamshire.
There are a couple of manuscripts of this work. I've read both. Both are well received, by me. I have memorised all 32 stanzas or 128 lines of this poem. Those "Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade," allowed him to tackle the issues of the wealthy and their reaction to the poor, which he witnessed in his lifetime: "Nor you, ye proud, impute to these the fault," and "The boast of heraldry the pomp of power. . . awaits alike th' inevitable hour, the paths of glory lead but to the grave."
I love this tackling of issues. Wealthy bragged about their heraldry, or family's coat of arms etc. The poor could not. I feel like with Gray's mistreatment by his father, he suddenly saw things so much differently. So much so, that everyone was going to die in a similar way, no matter how wealthy or poor, both were going to die.
Then he adds himself to the churchyard. A kindred spirit maybe inquires of Gray to a hoary headed swain, whom relates the story to him, and asks him to read the lay (poem/epitaph as the swain is not literate—common in his day) and finishes with his own epitaph. A great poem of literature I and my small family have studied doing homeschooling! One of the greatest! This is an outstanding poem!:):)
December 31, 2018
Thomas Gray's lines captured my imagination years ago:
The boast of heraldy, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e're gave
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.This brief stanza is beautiful and telling, but not the only memorable line of this enduring and memorable poem:
Full many a Flower is born to blush unseen
And wast its sweetness on the desert Air.And then he writes this:
He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a Tear.
He gained from Heav'n' twal all he wish'd, a Friend.Thomas Gray (1716-1779) began "Elegy in a Country Church-Yard" in 1742, but it sat dormant until his Great Aunt, Miss Mary Antrobus, died suddenly at sixty-six in 1949. Apparently her death stirred his poetic musings. According to the novelist Hugh Walpole (1884-1941), who wrote the introduction to Gray's poem for the 1951 edition I own, tradition holds he picked up the work in 1949 and completed it on June 12, 1750. It's theme, writes Walpole:
is the imminence to every human soul alive of the mystery of Death and the deep truth that this conclusion to all human endeavor has no regard for place or power, fame or obscurity.Gray's Elegy contains the Solomonic reality of Ecclesiastes ("vanity of vanity, all is vanity") without Solomon's concluding reality as to where vanity ends and real life begins (see Ecclesiastes 12).
August 20, 2020
A famous poem from the 18th century (late neoclassical period), it looks very old-fashioned and formal today. Like all the poems from this period, it's painstakingly constructed with perfect iambics and rhyme, making it fun to read aloud.
The beginning is a lovely portrait of the end of the work day in a small country village. For those longing or nostalgic for the country or for the past, this part will deliver the feels. Then the poem gets onto the elegy part, a reflection on the death a regular man. Thomas Gray didn't' care about women, nor did many of the major poets from this period.
Thomas Gray was an elite guy and his elegy to the common guy can feel a little condescending. It's still a great poem, impeccably constructed.
The beginning is a lovely portrait of the end of the work day in a small country village. For those longing or nostalgic for the country or for the past, this part will deliver the feels. Then the poem gets onto the elegy part, a reflection on the death a regular man. Thomas Gray didn't' care about women, nor did many of the major poets from this period.
Thomas Gray was an elite guy and his elegy to the common guy can feel a little condescending. It's still a great poem, impeccably constructed.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 108 reviews