Carol Rumens's poem of the weekPoetryPoem of the week: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray
Schoolchildren used to learn this resonant memorial to humble rustic folk, and they still should"Gray's Elegy" is a poem that most older adults in the UK can quote, if only a few lines. In my ideal school curriculum, it would still be required reading. Musical, eloquent, moral, the "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is not only a beautiful poem in its own right, but opens a network of cultural pathways. It connects the reader to English history and to European literature: Dante, Milton, the classical writers. Its ideas about society and education are deeply relevant today.
For brevity's sake, I've chosen the first 15 stanzas, where many of the best-loved lines and phrases occur, but the poem has a bigger argument and needs to be read in its entirety. The full text is here.
Thomas Gray began work on the "Elegy" in 1742. The setting may be in Stoke Poges, where Gray's mother was buried, and where his own remains would eventually lie. But the poem was probably composed in Cambridge, and the curfew tolled by the bell of Great St Mary's. Modern readers may associate curfew with political unrest or public disorder, but this was simply a fire precaution, signalling "lights out".
No wonder the first stanza is often memorised: not only a visual masterpiece, it has an impressive array of sound-effects. In fact, there is a striking quantity of alliteration stowed away in the whole poem's tidy, iambic portmanteau. It's particularly audible in the first four lines, where the mournful, vowel-heavy sounds of the cattle lowing and the bell's tolling are grounded by the earthier throb of tired, heavy, mud-caked footfall.
In stanza two, the sky has darkened, and the sounds have become lighter, fainter, yet somehow more intense: the beetle's "droning flight", the high, faint and silvery "tinklings" of sheep-bells. Then the music changes again, to suit the "moping owl" in the next stanza. Presumably, the owl is disturbed by human presences rather than unquiet spirits – unless, of course, as is sometimes suggested, the narrator himself is a ghost.
The low status of the "rude forefathers of the hamlet" is indicated by the fact that they are interred in the churchyard, and not inside the church. They have no ornate memorials.
The poet himself is now their chief mourner, and the recording angel of their rustic life. His portrait is idealised, but strong details lend realism. The housewife's vague but incessant activity is nicely captured in "ply", and the credible little adjective, "envied," in "envied kiss", evokes the children's scrambling rivalry for their father's attention.
From stanza eight, Grey's lyricism builds to a grander music. Milton is named at the argument's climax, and Milton's art is equalled in the syntax and tone. Originally, Gray chose three Romans as representative men of achievement: Cato, Tully and Caesar. A 19th-century commentator remarks that the English figures Gray substituted, Hampden, Milton and Cromwell (not quite so distantly historical in Gray's time, of course), must have struck readers as a daring novelty. The revision certainly sharpens the poem's crucial insight, and stresses that the uneducated villagers were not simply denied the heroism of a lost golden age, but a political influence closer to home.
Gray goes on to explore a counter-argument. If poverty circumscribes the "growing virtues" of the rustics, equally, it limits their "crimes". Obscurity is safer than fame, and morally superior. Yet the poem's deeper concern seems to be with memory and memorial: "For who to dumb Forgetfulness a prey./ This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,/ Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,/ Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?" The rhymes on the tombstones may be "uncouth", the inscriptions basic, yet by emphasising the importance of text, of lettering and naming, the poet is reinforcing his earlier argument.
The final "Epitaph" is a conundrum. Is it Gray's epitaph on himself (as the whole poem might be an elegy to himself) or does it commemorate, as sometimes supposed, the "stone-cutter poet?" Like the inscription on the tomb of the unknown soldier, it celebrates noble obscurity, but its resonant memorial would not, of course, exist without language and literacy.
"Gray's Elegy" once formed part of an educational programme that, at best, helped the impoverished young Miltons and Hampdens of the future to flourish. How well is the literacy of their modern counterparts served by the current system, and what will happen to them in the projected future of tuition fees, cuts to Arts and Humanities funding and the no doubt ongoing reinventions of the school curriculum?
From Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"
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:
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. (Cont/s.)
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