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Holograph manuscript of Gray's "Stanzas Wrote in a Country Church-Yard". The poem most likely originated in the poetry that Gray composed in 1742. William Mason, in Memoirs, discussed his friend Gray and the origins of Elegy: "I am inclined to believe that the Elegy in a Country Church-yard was begun, if not concluded, at this time [August 1742] also: Though I am aware that as it stands at ...
Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, and classical scholar at Cambridge University, being a fellow first of Peterhouse then of Pembroke College. He is widely known for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard , published in 1751.
However, in 1751, Thomas Gray wrote "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard". That poem inspired numerous imitators, and soon both the revived Pindaric ode and "elegy" were commonplace. Gray used the term elegy for a poem of solitude and mourning, and not just for funereal verse. He also freed the elegy from the classical elegiac meter.
An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy, "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometimes used as a catch-all to denominate texts of a somber or pessimistic tone, sometimes as a marker for textual monumentalizing, and sometimes strictly as a ...
Gray's Elegy (1750) [74] Thomas Gray was a regular visitor to Stoke Poges, which was home to his mother and an aunt, [ 75 ] and the churchyard at St Giles is reputed to have been the inspiration for his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard , though this is not universally accepted. [ 76 ]
The elegiac couplet is presumed to be the oldest Greek form of epodic poetry (a form where a later verse is sung in response or comment to a previous one). Scholars, who even in the past did not know who created it, [3] theorize the form was originally used in Ionian dirges, with the name "elegy" derived from the Greek ε, λεγε ε, λεγε—"Woe, cry woe, cry!"
These works appeared in Pope's lifetime and were popular, but the older, more conservative poetry maintained its hold for a while to come. On the other hand, Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard set off a new craze for poetry of melancholy reflection. Gray's Elegy appeared in 1750, and it immediately set new ground. First, it was ...
Alan Wheatley: "His unforgettable readings of English poetry for the English by Radio audience include Thomas Gray's Elegy and readings from Shakespeare with Jill Balcon." Al Capp: "Engraved on his headstone is a stanza from Thomas Gray: 'The plowman homeward plods his weary way / And leaves the world to darkness and to me' "