CC–VII Thomas Gray: Elegy written in a country Churchyard: As an elegy | elegiac characteristic

                 As an elegy Thomas Gray's famous "Elegy written in a Country Churchyard is more fresh and original than traditional. It is neither just a poem of special metrical composition (alternating hexameter and pentameter lines) as in ancient Greek and Roman literature nor simply a formal and sustained poem of lament for the death of a particular person as intended to be since the Renaissance. As regards versification, it is written in ten syllabled quatrain, stanza of four lines with alternate lines rhyming together. This is handle so skillfully that it has been popularized as the 'elegiac stanza'. Thematically again it is not just like the famous  elegies of English literature like Milton's Lycidas, Shelley's Adonais, Tennyson's In Memoriam, and Arnold's Thyrsis. For whereas the other poets mourn for the death of their near and dear ones in their poems, Gray for the entire humanity.

                In fact, if the poem is to be called an elegy, it is for the thoughts and feelings aroused by him which easily link him with the Graveyard school of poets of the eighteenth century. They present meditative poems, usually set in a graveyard, on the theme of mortality and in moods which range from elegiac pensiveness to profound gloom. Thomas parnell's Night-piece on Death, Edward young's Night-thoughts and Robert Blair's The Grave deserve special mention. Gray's Elegy, in this respect, is a class by itself. It truly strikes the note of melancholy, romantic melancholy in as Much as he reflects on life and death, the approaching nightfall and the churchyard scene. It is not for nothing that long says-"To deed Milton's II Penseroso and Gray's Elegy is to see the beginning and perfection of that 'literature of melancholy' which largely occupied English poets for more than a century".

                As a forerunner of Romanticism Gray goes back to nature, and what nature? It is charged with all pervading bloom and darkness. "The curfew tolls the kneel of parting day"-so begins the poem, and it immediately evoke the atmosphere of  twilight dimness associated with death and silence. There is a beautiful harmonization of the gloom within and gloom without ("And leaves the world to darkness and to me"). The next few images of the approaching evening "glimmering landscape","solemn stillness"etc. easily intensify that nocturnal ambience. And when this atmosphere is suited to the description of the graveyard of stock pogis in the next few stanzas, the poets intention to dwell on death and destruction is obvious.

                    The poet first goes to moralize on mortality of the poor rustic folks who live"far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife"in close communion with nature with their simply joy and Sorrows. They were unpretentious, unaffected and potential and yet could not rise to full fame and glory for their obscure background. The poet beautifully deplores this fact of their being nipped in the bad for lack of advantages and opportunities-"Full many a gm of purest ray serene,|the dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: | Full many a flower is born to blush unseen | And waste its sweetness on the desert air". While the poet's full humanitarian sympathy goes well with this lamentation, his warning to the higher-ups for 'mocking' at the ill-fated underdogs is also discernible in this section- " 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".  What is also noticeable is that the poet's observation on life and death here turns from particular to general or universal. predicament of morality is something which is inescapable, be it high or low, rich or poor. The poet finds no soothing consolation from death. It is to him an end in itself, and as such he finds in man's proud and glorious attempt to immortalise man either in 'storied urn' or 'animated bust' the vanity of vanities, and it plunges him in utter pensiveness, which gets a further edge in the last nine stanzas including the epitaph bearing out his personal grief and frustrations.

            Thus, Gray shows "sad music of humanity" which is personal, general as well as universal. However,as an elegy it has to be a beautiful poem before it is to be a receptacle of pain. Without using the machinery of a pastoral elegy as in Milton's Lycidas, he wonderfully creates the effect of bereavement, thanks to his superb metrical pattern, intricate imagery and sombre musicality.

-------------------