Resumo de Elegy Written In A Country Churchyard

Thomas Gray''s ''Elegy Written In a Country Churchyard'' is one of the most quoted poems
in the English language, famous not just for its exultation of the poor and humble, but for the beauty
and the wisdom of its lines which are now famous axioms. Infact, it is said that Abraham Lincoln,
when asked to describe his life, summed up in the lines of the Elegy "the short and simple annals
of the poor".
In this poem, Gray mourns not the death of any particular person but the entire community of
poor people. The life of the poor is contrasted and compared with that of the rich in order to drive home
one of the central truths of the poem that death equalises all classes of people -''the paths of glory lead
but to the grave'' He says that poverty forces people to a life of hard labour and curbs their talents. The
graves of poor are not adorned with tombs or trophies. They just lie under the cold clumps of mud
without any epitaphs. Fortune did not favour them and the genial current of the soul lay frozen within them.
"Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness in the desert of air"
In the last stanzas, from contemplating the lives of the dead people of the village, the poet moves
to a reflection on his own death.He imagines what might be said of him after he has gone. He even visiualises
his funeral procession. The poem ends with ''the Epitaph''- what the poet hopes will be inscribed on his tomb.
He says that he too is unknown to Fortune and Fame but he is happy as he is blessed with Knowledge.
The tension of the poem is maintained through a series of oppositions, day and night, poverty and wealth,
pride and humility, fame and anonymity, urban and rustic, ambition and simplicity, life and death and so on.
The setting of the poem is a Churchyard in Stoke Poges, a village near Eton which was familiar to Gray.
Gray died in 1771 and was buried beside his mother in the very same churchyard of Stoke Poges.
Gray has paid the highest tribute to the poor and the unknown by identifying himself so closely with them.

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Abstract by; J. Prabha

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