Poems

by Thomas Gray

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Genres: Poetry

248 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 8, 2016

About the author

Thomas Gray was an English poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.

Reviews

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for class. For whatever reason, I decided to read these out loud, and... oh my. I was literally sobbing. I'M STILL SALTY THIS MAN WAS SO SELF-CRITICAL AND DIDN'T WRITE MORE, but also, what a mood.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

My interest in Horace Walpole led me to Thomas Gray. They were fellow students and close friends until they clashed during a grand tour of Europe. They mended their friendship somewhat, and Walpole even printed some of Gray poetry at Walpole’s Strawberry Hill Press. In this collection of poetry, there’s even an ode that Gray wrote after the accidental death of Walpole’s beloved cat, Selima.

My edition of this work opens with an advertisement by the publisher, John Murray. He is addressing a lawsuit raised by another publisher, the Rev. Mr. Mason against an earlier printing of these poems. Murray strongly takes on Mason and delivers a scathing critique of Mason’s suit and Mason’s practices in general. Today, someone reading such an exchange might say “oh, snap!” In an short biography, also by Murray, he says of Gray: “a propensity to melancholy, the constant attendant of genius, was observable” (p. xxiii). So true.

I think the best poem in the collection was “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.” I thin he absolutely nails nostalgia, the innocence of childhood, the desire to look back as one ages but the realization that it was a different time and you can’t go back. He writes well of the innocence of with

Alas! regardless of their doom
The little victims play!
No sense have they of ills to come,
Nor care beyond today”

I lived that and can imagine myself saying that today.

“The Descent of Odin” is a poem that Gray translated from the Norse language. It reminded me of Homer’s epics. The previously mentioned “Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat” ends with a great warning, for the cat and for all of us, “Nor all that glisters, gold.” The sentiment is very old, and was used by Chaucer and Shakespeare before Gray used it to end his piece.

“Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard” is one of Gray’s most remembered poems, and I enjoyed it except for the epitaph at the end. Some research suggests it was added after an original draft. I think it cops out a little, taking the reflection, melancholy and resignation at death out of the poem. In the main body, I enjoyed:

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Await alike th’ inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave

The Notes at the end of this edition were also enjoyable, more so on a meta-level. They made me pine for a better classical education, for myself and others. Thankfully, I have enough of a classical education to realize that I need to learn more. Examples of what induced these feelings were quotes in classical Greek from Homer and snippets from Shakespeare, Dryden and other important writers.

For me, one of the beauties of poetry is its ability to evoke an emotion or trigger a memory that then evokes the emotion. And a poem that is timeless is even better, in that it also connects me to the writer and times in which they wrote. Coleridge once said: “Prose is words in their best order; poetry is the best words in the best order.” I have been lucky in that many of the poems I’ve read over the last few years have been the best words in their best order.

I finished the book yesterday and am writing my thoughts a day later. I remain confident that it deserves 5 stars and I’m happy to have read it.

[Daniel Wright · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't read this edition of the poems of Thomas Gray. The edition I have read is not on Goodreads. The reason for this is that it is unique. You cannot buy it in a shop. I was presented with it by my school's Headmaster upon leaving, wherein I officially became an alumnus.

The reason we have this tradition is that Gray was himself an alumnus, in a previous century. Indeed, he wrote a poem about it: 'Ode on a distant prospect of Eton College'.

Many of the poems I found to be difficult, even incomprehensible. At least one is frankly comic. At all times, one gets an impression of a flowing pen. The poet seems to effortlessly write in perfect meter and rhyme. It is testament to a time when such a high level of literacy was expected of schoolchildren is expected as a matter of course.

By far the greatest of Gray's poems is the 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard', which, as the Headmaster told me, 'every educated person should have read.' The exposition of the timeless subjects of death, social class, fate, virtue is perhaps unmatched in the English language, or even any language. Read his words (they can easily be found online), learn from him, feel you soul grow, but remember: 'the paths of glory lead but to the grave'.