Thomas Gray - 357 / 365 of reading one short story every day.

English scholar and poet Thomas Gray, in his lifetime has written only a small number of poems but he is known to have introduced a new subject matter for poetry.



Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is a poem by Gray, published in 1751. The death of his friend and poet Richard West in 1742 is the main influence for this poem. The Church of St Giles, Stoke Poges is the setting for the piece.



The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And leaves the world to darkness and to me.




Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;




The speaker ponders over death while sitting in solitude in a rural graveyard in the evening. He observes the graves,and he understands the reality and universal truth that death comes for everyone in the end. He says that whether rich or poor, elaborate engraved tombs of the rich who can afford them or simple graves, some unmarked, are all the same when the body mixes with mud. Though the poem is about death, it isn't macabre. Gray’s beautiful lyrical quality makes it beautiful in darkness. The poem ends with his own imagined epitaph.