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4. Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
Life
Thomas Gray was born in London, son of a bad-tempered businessman. When he
studied in Eton, he made two intimate friends, Horace Walpole and Richard
West. Then he studied at Cambridge University, in 1739, he traveled in
European Continent with Horace. After living in his hometown with his mother
for a short period, he returned to Cambridge and spent his rest life there.
In 1757, Gray was offered the poet Laureateship which he refused. In 1768,
Gray was appointed to the Professorship of Modern History at Cambridge. He
died in 1771 and was buried beside his mother in his hometown.
The publication of early poems including his odes “On
the Spring” in 1742 marked the beginning of his career as a poet. About the
same year, Gray started to write “Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard”,
finished in 1750 and published it in 1751. The popularity of the “Elegy” led
to a general recognition of Gray as the leading poet of his day. In
1759-1761, Gray studied intensively Icelandic and Celtic verse in the newly
established British Museum, and wrote “The Descent of Odin” and “The Fatal
Sisters” in imitation
As a scholar, Gray was familiar with all the
intellectual interest of his age, and his work had much of the precision and
polish of the classical school. His early poems belonged to the literary
tradition of neoclassicism. But he shared also the reawakened interest in
nature, in common men, and in medieval culture, so his later work was
generally romantic both in style and in spirit. He also fell under the
influence of sentimentalism. His poetry reveals two suggestive things:
first, the appearance of that melancholy which characterizes the poetry of
Romanticism; second, the study of nature, not for its own beauty or truth,
but rather as a suitable background for the play of human to be found in
Wordsworth.
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”
Because of this “Elegy”, Gray, together with Thomas
Parnell who wrote “Night-Piece on Death”, Robert Blair who wrote “The Grave”
and Edward Young who Wrote “Night Thoughts”, belonged to the
Graveyard
School. Though Gray’s poetic output was small, this elegy is always regarded
as the peak of graveyard poetry and Gray as the best poet in The Graveyard
School.
The “Elegy” describes the poet’s thoughts while he is
wandering in a countryside graveyard in twilight. This is a graveyard for
unknown and trivial common people who work lifelong and are buried in shabby
tombs. Thus the subject matter mainly comes from the nature and the simple
and strong feeling toward the poor man. Gray just started this elegy in a
serene tone tinged with melancholy.
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
This solemn mood is natural for a meditating person who is
walking along the country churchyard. The poet bethought of the common
peasants, their obscurity, their toil and finally death. The poet concluded
that no matter the pimping or the powerful, death will always remember them:
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave
Then the latter part of the poem transits to another
sight with the following stanza in which the poet draw the conclusion with
his foreseeable future from the “sleep coarse” countryman:
For thee, Who mindful of the unhonored dead
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate,
This stanza changes the poet’s subjective thoughts of death
to the countryman’s objective narrate of his fate. In the latter part, a new
sadness further strengthens the grief of the poet who is a frustrated and
aimless young man.
No doubt the poet shows his great sympathy for these humble
people and censors mildly those extravagant and dissipated bigwigs. He
points out that men should keep open-minded to fate in that we reach the
same end---death by different ways. This is a distinctive feature of Gray’s
elegy which is for the common people while the elegies at that time were
usually for the high officials and nobles. This poem also shows a typical
social mood of that period, which can be find in every person’s mind, and
expresses it in a perfect form. Though Gray shows his remonstration in this
poem, it is has no indignation or rebellious spirit. It made the whole poem
a dispirited tone.
This elegy consists of 32 stanzas, with four lines in each one in
iambic
pentameter. The rhyming scheme is abab.
In this elegy, there are many uses of personification.
The poet uses Grandeur, Flattery, Luxury and Pride, and so on, to indicate
people who have these features. Generally speaking this elegy adheres to the
neo-classical tradition, yet the vivid description of nature and melancholy
mood permeating in this poem obviously indicate the influence of
sentimentalism and romanticism. The Elegy is regarded as “the best known
poem in the English language”, and a poem full of the gentle melancholy
which marks all early romantic poetry.
Gray, who is good at using symbols, figures of speech with
melancholy mood, artistically combined traditional forms and poetic diction
with new topics and modes of expression and thus be considered as a
precursor of the romantic revival.
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