Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray Essay

Thomas Grays poem, lament Written in a rustic Churchyard, was first published in 1751. Grays idea of agricultural life as describe in this poem is agrarian and devoted to the land. He talks of the plow turning the greensward and of the sickle mowing down the grain. He mentions the plowmen capricious their team of draught animals from the fields. He tells of strew sheds and of people awaking to the crow of the rooster.            Gray uses the fable of rest to describe destruction. He says that those drowsy no longer hear the voices of children or the touch and the kisses of those loved ones. He describes stopping point as lending a bleak ear and those dead as no longer hearing a mobilize to honor nor does it hear any speech communication of flattery.            Gray comments on the deaths of the rich and powerful, proverb that those dead are no bankrupt off than the poor dead rust ics. He says that the fact that the rich mans mug up are in whatever fine urn does not allow him to hump his mansion any more than the sodbuster enjoys the humble earth in which his bones are placed.            Gray takes on the depicted object of class as a rhetorical device to get his point across that the rewards for both are equal and that death is a leveler of the playing field. He impresses upon the contributor the fact that in the humble churchyard may lie the remains of a life that had potential for greatness. He says that many sweet blossoms bloom, live and crumble to spit unseen and unknown by anyone.            If I were to be lying in the burial ground of the country church I would give care to have Gray say of me that I was a friend of heaven, of course, and that I saw and enjoyed the dawns of my days and lived my life to the fullest. Now that I am dead left me sleep in peac e and forgive and entomb the frailties I displayed on earth.                                                  Works Cited            Gray, T.  Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 1751