Thomas Gray’s poem “Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard” portrays the pastoral ideal by using several different images. To begin with, the title itself suggests someone mourning for someone else, and remembering their life and work in a lonely, solitary churchyard. A reading of the poem shows that Gray suggests that even though a person is from this rustic lifestyle, anonymous and uneducated, they are more than likely to have had a life filled with joy and will be remembered just like those who are rich, powerful or famous. He also mentions that grand memorials are no greater than a simple grave marker. In the end, even if you are poor and unknown, or rich and famous then all that counts is friendship.
“He gave mis’ry all he had, a tear,
He gain’d from Heav’n (‘twas all he wish’d) a friend” (Lines 123 – 124)
Gray shows us an image of a lifestyle that was firmly embedded in his readers mind. It does however, state the fact quite clearly that these people were born into this lifestyle and were taught this way of living because of who they were. They could have been born rich and done nothing great with their lives, but they were born into a rustic lifestyle and were great and glorious because of what they did within their life.
The “tolls” are a sound made by a bell being rung extremely slowly, announcing the death of a person, who has parted from this life over to death. It seems that Gray does not want the reader to be ‘in’ the poem and distances the reader from the poem and the scene by placing himself in it. The speaker is alone, in the solitary churchyard awaiting the end of the day when he is left to the “the world and darkness” (Line 4). This darkness can be seen as an everlasting sleep, the darkness of death.
There are religious themes throughout the poem in which Gray uses an image of monastic lifestyle, alongside that of the countryside lifestyle.
“Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.” (Lines 15 – 16)
This image of the coffin as the cell parallels that of a monk. The cells are enclosed and constrained just as he expresses the villagers feel later on in the poem when he suggests that they do not step forward to receive greatness. He uses the word ‘rude’ to mean not only rustic, unsophisticated people, but also anonymous people. Monks are anonymous and so are those that he speaks of.
There are no activities or farming duties to be done, those that once tended the land, now lie beneath it.
“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! (Lines 25 – 28)
The “inevitable hour” (Line 35) relates back to the first line of the poem, “The curfew tolls the knell of the parting day”. All people, whether poor and primitive, or influential and rich, all wait this inevitable hour, the hour of death, the hour that everybody regardless of status will one day experience. The hour in which the church bells ring out their mournful tune. “The paths of glory…” (Line 36) not only mean those affluent people who have gained it, either through inheritance, status or rank. But to those anonymous people who no – one knew or remembers, they too were glorious, but in different ways. Those glorious people have gone, and can never come back.
“Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?” (Lines 41 – 42)
Grays play on words in line 59 again paints a picture in which these anonymous people in their graves are the same as those who could afford to pay for great memorials. “Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,” (Line 59) Milton was deaf, not blind and was certainly glorious and admired. Gray tries to say that these people have never had the chance to show that they too are intelligent and are worthy of the same mourning as others, because they have been patronised by “…lis’ning senates…” and “threats of pain and ruin…”. In Line 55, “Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen,” he strengthens his point by stating that the villagers have just as many qualities, and are just as intellectual as the glorious, but they move about unheard, unseen and anonymous. These villagers are still human beings and they want to be remembered, just like everyone else, but they want to be remembered for different things and for different reasons.
Bibliography
Butt, J., (1963) The Poems of Alexander Pope. London: Routledge
Fairer, D., Gerrard, C., (2004) Eighteenth Century Poetry: An Annotated Anthology.2nd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing
Goodridge, J., (1995) Rural Life In Eighteenth Century Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Loghrey, B., (1984) The Pastoral Mode: A Selection Of Critical Essays. London: Macmillan