26 pages • 52 minutes read
Thomas GrayElegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1751A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Sound versus Silence
“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” opens with the sound of church bells and cows: “The curfew tolls the knell of parting day / The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea” (Lines 1-2). These opening sounds are then contrasted with the “solemn stillness” (Line 6) in the air in the second stanza and the dead men in the graves who can no longer be awoken by roosters or horns (Lines 19-20). Thus, early in the poem, life is associated with sound and death with hush.
These associations are continued when the poet asks: “Can Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust, / Or Flatt’ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?” (Lines 43-44) Here, Honor and Flattery are personified as people capable of speech, but not capable of reaching the silent, insensate dead.
This motif is complicated when Gray writes “[s]ome mute inglorious Milton” (Line 59) might be buried in the graveyard. Who is Milton without the sound and glory of his poetry? Gray suggests that the lower-class people buried in the cemetery are the least changed by death, because their lives did not lead to the noise associated with Honor and Flattery. As the speaker puts it: “Along the cool sequester’d vale of life / They kept the noiseless tenor of their way” (Lines 75-76).
At the end of the poem, the white-haired swain’s spoken remembrance of the poet is replaced by the poet’s epitaph. The script “[g]rav’d” (Line 116) on the poet’s tombstone connects the motif of sound versus silence to the theme of remembrance after death. Though silent in death, the poet is able to achieve remembrance through the words on his tombstone and, of course, through the words of his poem.
Nature
The motif of nature begins with the pastoral setting in the opening four stanzas, but moves beyond that, as well. The lower-class farmers buried in the graveyard spent their lives working the land; this was an important part of their existence. As the speaker meditates on the landscape and the lives of the people buried in the cemetery, he comes to the conclusion that dying is a natural part of living. He writes: “Ev’n from the tomb the voice of Nature cries” (Line 91). Many elegies have reached a similar conclusion about the connection between nature and death, but in Gray’s elegy this conclusion is much more integral and related to the lives of the people the poem elegizes.
Solitude
Gray’s poem relies on solitude. The speaker could not have written this poem if he had brought a friend or a date to the cemetery, or if the plowman had stuck around to have a chat at the end of the day. Being alone allows the speaker to focus on the “rude forefathers” (Line 16) laid to rest in the churchyard. Being solitary also makes the speaker more akin to men beneath his feet. These lower-class farmers may be buried in the same cemetery, but they are each alone in their separate graves. The speaker describes each grave as a “narrow cell” (Line 15). The speaker is closer to these dead men because he is alone and engrossed in silent reflection.
Death is repeatedly associated with silence in Gray’s elegy and sound with life. If the speaker wasn’t by himself—if he was talking with another person—he wouldn’t be able to produce this meditation on mortality. Even at the end of the poem, when the speaker imagines a “kindred spirit” (Line 96) coming to the churchyard and asking about him, the speaker doesn’t get to speak to this likeminded person (the speaker is dead): Only the swain speaks to the cemetery’s new visitor. Death is humankind’s common fate, but is also isolating. In order to meditate on death, the speaker of this poem must be alone.
Related Titles
By Thomas Gray
