1. How would you characterize the poet's attitude to the poor people buried in the churchyard?
2. Towards the end of the poem, the poet depicts how he ("thee, who mindful of the unhonoured dead/Dost in these lines their artless tale relate") hopes be remembered after his death. First, he describes what some "hoary headed swain may say" about him (a "swain" being the way male peasants are conventionally described and romanticized in pastoral poetry), then he supplies the epitaph that his tombstone will bear. What do these two imagined memorials tell you about how the poet regards himself?
3. What confuses you about this poem? What questions do you need answers to in order to make sense of it? What stanzas seem particularly difficult or obscure?
Deadline: Wednesday (1/26), 1pm.
8 comments:
In response to question number 1, I interpreted Gray's attitude towards the buried souls in "Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard" to be one of sympathy and respect. I'd even go so far as to say that it is Gray's desire to connect with them on some level, to establish himself among them.
Throughout the poem, the theme of inevitable death is hard to ignore. In lines 34-36 he writes, "And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave, / Awaits alike th'inevitable hour. / The paths of glory lead but to the grave." In other words, Gray is making the (perhaps obvious) suggestion that no matter one's class, station, etc. every person is headed towards the same fate. What seems to strike Gray is that those who are not recognized for their talents ("Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, / And waste its sweetness on the desert air [lines 54-55]), the majority of the individuals buried in the churchyard surrounding him, still deserve a level of respect, if anything, he seems to suggest, for their humbleness.
While Gray acknowledges the human desire to be widely known, it also seems that he is aware of the fact that fame isn't everything. The inclusion of what his own future epitaph would read (lines 117-128), the brief summary of a man, "A Youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown" (line 118), leads me to imply that he would rather group himself with the common, humble man and have led a decent life, than to have achieved ultimate glory only to reach the same end; overall it leads me to imply his respect, understanding, and sympathy for those resting in the churchyard.
Question 1.
Thomas Gray seems to honor the poor people that are buried in the churchyard. The language he uses takes a more sympathetic perspective of the poor. This is first seen in the fourth stanza in lines 15 and 16 when Gray writes, "Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, / The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep," (15, 16). This is significant because it replaces the language of death with language of sleep and rest. The poor dead are not deceased and decaying in their graves. No, in fact, they're resting from a life of hard work. A few stanzas later, Gray describes their life of labor:
Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;
How jocund did they drive their team afield!
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy stroke
This idea of rest is only reinforced when Gray writes that the scent of morning, the rooster's call, the singing birds, etc. "no more shall rouse them for their lowly bed" (emphasis mine, 19-20). In the poet's eyes, the poor have paid their dues and deserve their well-earned, eternal sleep.
It also seems that he is implicitly speaking to the reader, saying that even though they lived with little fame, power, or glory, their contribution to their families and even the world are not small. The poet argues that even though the world may dismiss the deceased poor for their lack of worldly significance, nobody, not even the idea of Ambition or Grandeur are to "mock their [the poor's] useful toil / Their homely joys, and destiny obscure" or sneer at "The short and simple annals of the poor" (30, 32). For the speaker, a life well lived and significance has nothing to do with numbers and quantities of excess. Rather, it has all to do with service, family, and the experience of joy, which the poor--in this poet's mind--achieve in the fullest sense.
This was an elegy, a poem that mourned the dead of the common men, perhaps inspired by Thomas Gray’s close friend. I know that this is some type of funeral setting because “the curfew tolls the knell of parting day” something that is only done during times of great mourning, i.e. the death of someone. The narrator of the poem appears to be in some sort of trance at the country churchyard during sunset. There he is reflecting on mankind and the fact that death knows no wealth. In other worlds, “Tomorrow is not promised to ANYONE.” The speaker also portrays a calm reaction as if he is all too familiar with death’s presence. I didn’t quite understand what to make of stanza before the Epitaph. Then I was wondering why Thomas Gray chose to create this poem and then have the Epitaph immediately follow? Did I miss something? Did he set the atmosphere for us and then show us his friend’s tombstone?
Question 2:
Gray provides two accounts of what may be remembered of him after his death. The first, a response from a "hoary-headed swain" who was asked about his fate, takes up nineteen lines of the poem but doesn't really say very much. According to the man, Gray's legacy seems to entail mostly sitting under a tree and watching the brook before wandering around and "mutt'ring his wayward fancies" (106). The reply ends with the story of Gray's absence from the community and the ensuing funeral, which places Gray in the same country churchyard that is the subject of the poem.
Gray's epitaph is also modest; it points out that fortune and fame were unknown to him and that all he wished for (which he got in heaven) was a friend. The main parallel between the swain's account and the epitaph is the idea that Gray is moody. The swain says that Gray would sometimes be "drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn, / Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hopeless love" (107-108), and the epitaph points out that "Melancholy mark'd him for her own" (120).
The last part of the epitaph implores the reader to "no farther seek his merits to disclose, / Or draw his frailties from their dread abode" (125-126), which is ironic because it means that we should not be doing exactly what I'm doing right now -- trying to figure out more about Gray's life and legacy (as he portrays it in the poem). However, it also means that we should not be taking the same approach that Gray took throughout the poem by speculating on what these people's lives could have been. There is a cold finality to the epitaph; it is almost as if Gray is saying that all attempts to reconstruct "merits" or "frailties" are pointless, because, as the last two lines state, those qualities are now in heaven with him. This finality and inevitability is echoed throughout the poem in lines such as "the paths of glory lead but to the grave" (36), which also renders most of the poem pointless. What does it matter what these people did or could have done if everyone's going to die anyway? The crux of the poem lies in the eleventh stanza:
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flatt'ry soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
"Storied urns" and "animated busts" clearly refer to the types of objects used to memoralize people. "Honour's voice" and "Flatt'ry" refer to eulogies and tributes, but they also refer to the poem itself. Can this poem provoke the silent dust or soothe the dull cold ear of Death? In conjunction with the end of the epitaph, Gray seems to believe that the answers to these questions is "no," but he spends most of the poem seeking the merits and drawing the frailties of the poor in the graveyard. Then, the difference Gray creates between those poor and himself is that, while he believes that it's worthwhile to seek answers about the poor (as he spends the poem doing), he does not apply the same standard to himself. Whether this shows true modesty or is just an example of him being ironic (and actually imploring us to find out more) is unclear.
Thank RS your post clarified a lot for me in your post...I just reread it and had a better understanding for its purpose.
I think I agree with SMR and pshu4's arguments that Grey is honoring/sympathizing with/respecting the dead poor buried here, but on my first read I thought he was being critical of the poor in general in regards to literacy and their inability to write well. He describes a crude gravemaker "With uncouth rhimes and shapeless scultpure deck'd" that has been "spelt by th'unletter'd muse" (79, 81). And just before the epitaph the swain says "'Approach and read (for thou can'st read) the lay.'" So I started thinking that Grey was condemning the poor for being less educated. Dead and buried these impoverished people are still marked, perhaps haunted, by literary inadequacies, while his final resting place is the home of a well-crafted, poetic epitaph that identifies his as learned and eloquent.
Am I reading this incorrectly?
Gray regards the deceased with respect and reverence. He is very saddened with all the death in the world. He says those that die, “…leaves the world to darkness and to me” (4) and each man “in his narrow cell for ever laid” (15). The tone of the poem implies that death leaves your life no meaning and no fame. Regardless if a man is rich or poor, his fate is still the same and his fame is never guaranteed. He seems to be afraid that how he feels for the dead is how others will think of him after he dies. He is doomed to spend eternity in a grave beneath a shady tree and never leave his mark on the world.
It is also sad that the poet thinks no one will remember him after he is deceased. But, his epitaph is very indicative of how others see him and how people regarded him as a kind, good person. All he wanted was a friend in Heaven, which leads me to believe that he was somewhat of self-loathing on Earth. It is also ironic that he fears that no one will remember him after he dies, just like no one remembers the others in the graveyard; yet, he is in the graveyard paying tribute to the lives of the people buried there.
The poem takes touch with the idea of mortality. We are all human beings that can have relations with the divine regardless of our socioeconomic status. Gray is paying homage to the poor in the graveyard, knowing that not entirely the rest of society will do the same-hence, those "rude forefathers of the hamlet" (16). Gray is the leading mourner for the poor. He says "Let not Ambition mock their useful toil" (29) and I sense that he means means despite those people's lack of education or wealth, they are not to be mocked at. Death is not a happy subject for any individual, and those people deserve reverence. Speaking of being uneducated, for some reason I get the feeling Gray wants to say something education and its relation to society- but what?
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