Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard | Themes
Death - An elegy is a poem which laments the dead. Gray’s “Elegy” is noteworthy as one of the best-known poems about death in all of European literature as it mourns the death not of great or famous people, but of common man. The poem presents the reflections of an observer who, passing by a churchyard that is out in the country at sunset, which impels him to meditate on the nature of human mortality and about the significance of the strangers buried there. The poem invokes the classical idea of memento mori, a Latin phrase which states plainly to all mankind, "Remember that you must die." In this poem, the graveyard acts as a memento mori, reminding the narrator to not place too much value on this life because someday he too will be dead and buried. The speaker considers the fact that in death, there is no difference between great and common people. He goes on to wonder if among the lowly people buried in the churchyard there had been any natural poets or politicians whose talent had simply never been discovered or nurtured. This thought leads him to praise the dead for the honest, simple lives that they lived.
The speaker of the poem is surrounded by the idea of death, and throughout the first seven stanzas there are numerous images pointing out the contrast between death and life. After mentioning the churchyard in the title, which establishes the theme of mortality, the poem itself begins with images of gloom and finality. The darkness at the end of the day, the forlorn moan of lowing cattle, the stillness of the air (highlighted by the beetle’s stilted motion) and the owl’s nocturnal hooting all serve to set a background for this serious meditation. However, it is not until the fourth stanza that the poem actually begins to deal with the cemetery, mentioned as the place where the village forefathers “sleep.” In the following stanzas, the speaker tries to imagine what the lives of these simple men might have...