Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
by Thomas Gray
Assigned by 1 of the 9 reading lists, catalogue entry only
- Written
- 1751
- Form
- Lyric poetry
- Language
- English
- Length
- Short · 8 ppunder 120 pages
- Difficulty
- Moderate2 of 5 for a first-year reader
We recommendSelected PoemsPenguin Classics, 2006A short annotated selection of Gray, edited by John Heath-Stubbs, that includes the odes assigned alongside the Elegy.
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A poem of thirty-two quatrains, probably begun at Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire and finished after several years. At dusk in a village churchyard the speaker reflects on the obscure dead beneath the turf, who might have been poets or statesmen if poverty had not repressed their noble rage, and on how their unmarked lives were spared both the crimes and the glories of the great. It ends with the speaker imagining his own death and the epitaph a passer-by would read. It was for two centuries the most quoted poem in English.
No reading guide yet
The catalogue entry above is complete: the dates, the form, the themes and every program that assigns Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard are verified against each program's published list.
What is missing is the part that takes real work: the summary, the key passages, and a recommended translation. The edition named below is the one most programs assign, so the buy links are useful already.