Lecture 12
Thomas Gray
Elegy Written in a Country-yard
• I. Sentimentalism in English Poetry.
•
In the first half of the l8th century, Pope
was the leader of English poetry and the
heroic couplet the fashion of poetry. By the
middle of the century, however,
sentimentalism gradually made its
appearance.
• Sentimentalism came into being as the
result of a bitter discontent among the
enlightened people with social reality.
Differences between sentimentalism and
classicism
• 1.Dissatisfied with reason, which classicists appealed to,
sentimentalists appealed to sentiment to the human
heart.
• 2. "Sentimentalism turned to the countryside and its
material and so is in striking contrast to classicism, which
had confined itself to the clubs and drawing-rooms,
and to the social and political life of London.
• 3. Meanwhile, the poetry of the sentimentalism is marked
by a sincere sympathy for the poverty--stricken
expropriated peasants. They wrote the "simple annals of
the poor', though still in a classical style.
II. Pre-romanticism:
•
In the latter half of the 18th century, a new
literary move merit arose in Europe, called the
Romantic Revival.
• It was marked by
• a strong protest against the bondage of
Classicism
• a recognition of passion and emotion
• a renewed interest in medieval literature.
• In England, this movement showed itself in the
trend of pre-Romanticism in poetry, which was
ushered in by poetry, represented by Blake and
Burns. Thomas Chatterton (1752-1770) is the
saddest and most interesting figure of the PreRomantic movement.
III. Thomas Gray
(December 26, 1716 – July 30, 1771)
an English poet, classical scholar and professor
at Cambridge University.
• He was born in Cornhill, London, educated at
Eton College. He recalled his schooldays as a
time of great happiness, as is evident in his Ode
on a Distant Prospect of Eton College.
• He made three close friends at Eton: Horace
Walpole, son of Prime Minister Robert Walpole,
Thomas Ashton, and Richard West. The four of
them prided themselves on
their sense of style, their sense of humour,
and their appreciation of beauty.
• In 1734, Gray went to Cambridge. At first
he stayed in Pembroke College.
• He began seriously writing poems in 1742,
mainly after his close friend Richard West
died.
• He moved to Cambridge and began a selfimposed programme of literary study,
becoming one of the most learned men of
his time.
IV. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
1. It is believed that Gray wrote his masterpiece, the
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, in the graveyard
of the church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire in 1750.
2. The poem was a literary sensation when published by
Robert Dodsley in February 1751 and has made a
lasting contribution to English literature.
3. Its reflective, calm and stoic tone was greatly admired,
and it was pirated, imitated, quoted and translated into
Latin and Greek.
V. ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY CHURCHYARD
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd winds 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:
Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.
• Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The breezy call of incense-breathing morn,
The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,
No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed.
For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn,
Or busy housewife ply her evening care:
No children run to lisp their sire's return,
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to share,
• 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!
Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor.
The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour:The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
• Nor you, ye Proud, impute to these the fault
If Memory o'er their tomb no trophies raise,
Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise.
Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honour's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:
• But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.
• Th' applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their history in a nation's eyes,
Their lot forbad: nor circumscribed alone
Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined;
Forbad to wade through slaughter to a throne,
And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,
The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.
• Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray;
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.
Yet e'en these bones from insult to protect
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
Their name, their years, spelt by th' unletter'd Muse,
The place of fame and elegy supply:
And many a holy text around she strews,
That teach the rustic moralist to die.
• For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resign'd,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?
On some fond breast the parting soul relies,
Some pious drops the closing eye requires;
E'en from the tomb the voice of Nature cries,
E'en in our ashes live their wonted fires.
For thee, who, mindful of th' unhonour'd dead,
Dost in these lines their artless tale relate;
If chance, by lonely contemplation led,
Some kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, --
• Haply some hoary-headed swain may say,
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of dawn
Brushing with hasty steps the dews away,
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn;
"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech
That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high.
His listless length at noontide would he stretch,
And pore upon the brook that babbles by.
"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,
Muttering his wayward fancies he would rove;
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,
Or crazed with care, or cross'd in hopeless love.
• One morn I miss'd him on the custom'd hill,
Along the heath, and near his favourite tree;
Another came; nor yet beside the rill,
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he;
"The next with dirges due in sad array
Slow through the church-way path we saw him borne,Approach and read (for thou canst read) the lay
Graved on the stone beneath yon aged thorn."
The Epitaph
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melacholy marked him for her own.
• Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had, a tear,
He gained from Heaven ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.
No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode
(There they alike in trembling hope repose),
The bosom of his Father and his God.
VI. Appreciation
6.1. About the title
Its title describes its function: lamenting
someone's death, and affirming the life
that preceded it so that we can be
comforted.
6.2. Analysis
• The poem opens with a death-bell sounding, a knell. The
lowing of cattle, the droning of a beetle in flight, the tinkling
of sheep-bells, and the owl's hooting (stanzas 1-3) mourn
the passing of a day, described metaphorically as if it were
a person, and then suitably the narrator's eye shifts to a
human graveyard.
• From creatures that wind, plod, wheel, and wander, he
looks on still, silent "mould'ring" heaps, and on turf under a
moonlit tower where "The rude forefathers" "sleep" in a
"lowly bed." Gray makes his sunset a truly human deathknell. No morning bird-song, evening family life, or farming
duties (stanzas 5-7) will wake, welcome, or occupy them.
They have fallen literally under the sickle, the ploughshare,
and the axe that they once wielded. They once tilled glebe
land, fields owned by the church, but now lie under
another church property, the parish graveyard.
• This scene remains in memory as the narrator
contrasts it with allegorical figures who represent
general traits of eighteenth-century humanity:
Ambition (29), Grandeur (31), Memory (38),
Honour (43), Flattery and Death (44),
Knowledge (49), Penury (51), Luxury and Pride
(71), Forgetfulness (85), and Nature (91). In
shifting from individuals to universal types that
characterize the world at large, the poem
exchanges country "darkness" for civic and
national life. Yet, against expectations, the
narrator defends the dead in his remote
churchyard cemetery from the contempt of
abstractions like Ambition and Grandeur. He
makes four arguments.
• First, the goals of the great, which include aristocratic
lineage, beauty, power, wealth, and glory, share the
same end as the "rude forefathers," the grave. Human
achievements diminish from the viewpoint of the eternal.
The monuments that Memory erects for them ("storied
urn or animated bust"), the church anthems sung at their
funeral, and the praise of Honour or Flattery before or
after death also cannot ameliorate that fate. The narrator
reduces the important, living and deceased, to the level
of the village dead.
• Secondly, he asks pointedly why, were circumstances
different, were they to have been educated with
Knowledge's "roll" and released from "Chill Penury,"
would they not have achieved as much in poetry and
politics as did figures like Hampden, Milton, and
Cromwell?
• Thirdly, the narrator suggests that his
unimportant, out-of-power country dead lived
morally better lives by being untempted to
commit murder or act cruelly.
• Last, "uncouth rhymes," "shapeless sculpture,"
and "many a holy text" that characterize their
"frail" cemetery memorials, and even those
markers with only a simple name and age at
death, "spelt by th' unlettered muse" (81), serve
the important universal human needs: to prompt
"the passing tribute of a sigh" (80) and to "teach
the rustic moralist to die" (84)
• In the next three stanzas, the narrator -- the
"me" who with darkness takes over the world at
sunset (4) -- finally reveals why he is in the
cemetery, telling the "artless tale" of the
"unhonour'd Dead" (93). He is one of them.
• Like the "rude Forefathers" among whom he is
found, the narrator ghost is "to Fortune and to
Fame unknown" (118). Like anyone who "This
pleasing anxious being e'er resigned," he -- in
this narrative itself -- casts "one longing, ling'ring
look behind" to life (86-88).
• As he says, "Ev'n from the tomb the voice of
Nature cries" (91). He tells us the literal truth in
saying, "Ev'n in our ashes live their wonted fires"
(92). These fires appear in his ashes, which
speak this elegy.
• As Nature's voice from the dead, the "living lyre," he
addresses himself in the past tense as having passed on,
as of course he did. Should some "kindred spirit" ask
about his "fate," that of the one who describes the dead "in
these lines," an old "swain" (shepherd) might describe his
last days. If so, he would have seen, with "another" person,
the narrator's bier carried towards the church and his
epitaph "Grav'd on the stone" (116). Only a ghost would
know, with certainty, that "The paths of glory lead but to
the grave" (36). Little wonder that the poem ends with the
swain's invitation to the "kindred spirit" to read the text of
the narrator's own epitaph. The narrator ghost gave "all he
had, a tear," and did get the only good he wished for, "a
friend." He affirms the value of friendship above all other
goods in life. His wish is granted by the kindred spirit who
seeks out his lost companion.
6.3. The Form
• Gray adopts and refines a regular poetics typical
of his period. His iambic pentameter quatrains are
self-contained and end-stopped. They do not
enjamb with the next stanza but close with
terminal punctuation, except for two passionate
sequences. Stanzas 16-18 express the narrator's
crescendo of anger at the empowered proud
whose virtues go hand-in-hand with crimes:
slaughter, mercilessness, and lying. Stanzas 2425 introduce the dead youth who, narrates the
poem. Quatrains also regularly consist of endstopped lines, equally self-contained and even
interchangeable.
• For example, in the first stanza, lines 1-3 could
be in any order, and lines 2 and 4 could change
places. Gray builds his lines, internally, of units
just as regular. Often lines are miniature clauses
with balanced subject and predicate, such as
"The curfew" (subject) and "tolls the knell of
parting day" (predicate; 1), or "No children"
(subject) and "run to lisp their sire's return"
(predicate; 23). Within both subject and
predicate units, Gray inserts adjective-noun
pairs like "parting day," "lowing herd," "weary
way," "glimm'ring landscape," "solemn stillness,"
"droning flight," "drowsy tinklings," and "distant
fold" (1-8). By assembling larger blocks from
these smaller ones, Gray builds symmetry at all
levels.
• He also links sequences of these regular blocks.
Alliteration, unobtrusively, ties successive lines together:
for example, "herd wind" and "homeward" (2-3), "droning
flight" and "distant folds" (7-8), and "mantl'd tow'r" and
"moping owl" (9-10). Gray rhymes internally in "slowly
o'er the lea" (2) or "And all the air ... / Save where" (6-7),
or he exploits an inconspicuous initial assonance or
consonance in "Beneath ... / Where heaves" (12-14),
and "The cock's shrill ... / No more shall" (19-20). Parallel
syntactic construction across line and stanza boundaries
links sequences of such larger units. For example,
twinned clauses appear with "Save" (7, 9), "How" (27-28),
"Can" (41, 43), "Full many a" (53, 55), "forbade" (65, 67),
and "For who" and "For thee" (85, 93), among others.
• Semantically, Gray's "Elegy" reads like a collage
of remembered experiences. Some are realized
in both image and sound. "The swallow twitt'ring
from the straw-built shed" (18) vividly and
sharply conveys one instant in the awakening
process on a farm. At other times, the five
senses blur, as in "the madding crowd's ignoble
strife" (73), or "This pleasing anxious being" (86),
but these remain snapshots, though of feelings,
not images. They flow from a lived life
remembering its keenest moments in tranquillity.
• These formal elements in Gray's poetics beautifully
strengthen the poem's content.
• "Elegy" gives us a ghost's perspective on his life, and
ours. The old swain describes him as a melancholic loner
who loved walking by hill, heath, trees, and stream.
• The epitaph also reveals that he was well-educated, a
youth who died unknown. These are the very qualities we
might predict in the writer, from the style of his verse.
• "Elegy" streams with memories of the countryside where
the youth walked.
• The firm, mirrored linguistic structures with which he
conveys those recalled moments belong to someone welleducated in Latin, "Fair Science," and well-read in English
poetry. Gray did not just give his readers succinct
aphorisms about what Isaac Watt would term, "Man Frail,
God Eternal," but recreated a lost human being.
• In reading "Elegy," we recreate a person, only to find out
that he died, too young, too kind, and too true to a
melancholy so many share.
6.4. Translation
• 1.晚钟响起来一阵阵给白昼报丧，
牛群在草原上迂回，吼声起落，
耕地人累了，回家走，脚步踉跄，
把整个世界留给了黄昏与我。
-----卞之琳
•
•
•
•
暮钟鸣,昼已冥
牛羊相呼，迂回草径
农人荷锄归，蹒跚而行
把全盘世界留给我与黄昏
－－－郭沫若
晚钟殷殷响，夕阳已西沉，
群牛呼叫归，迂回走草径。
－－丰华瞻
6.5. Exercise
• The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
•
To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
• Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
•
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame.
• Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
•
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
• Along the cool sequestered vale of life
•
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.
• Yet even these bones from insult to protect
•
Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
• With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,
•
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.
QUESTIONS:
1.These three stanzas are taken from a rather long
poem entitled ____________.
2. What is the name of the poet?
3. Judging from this selection, the poet belongs
to the school of _________.
A. sentimentalism B. realism C. modernism
4. "Far from the madding crowd" is used as the
name of a novel by ______.
A. Hardy B. Fitzgerald
C. Thackeray
5. The poem contains altogether 32 quatrains of
iambic pentameter, with a rime scheme of
__________ for each stanza.
Answers
1. "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
2. Thomas Gray
3. A
4. A
5. abab