Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

“Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is not just an elegy—it is an elegy written for a poet. At the end of the poem, the speaker offers consolation for his own death, making this poem a self-elegy. Nonetheless, as Gray’s elegy treats the death of a poet it is therefore one of what Sally Connolly terms “genealogical elegies.” Much like a family tree, elegies written for dead poets form “a branching and intersecting tree of influence and indebtedness” (Connolly, Sally. Grief & Meter. University of Virginia Press, 2016, p. 5). More than any other type of poem, elegies written for poets are descended from and relate to other elegies written for poets. As a result, to understand the literary context for Gray’s poem, the reader must understand a bit about this family tree of elegies written for poets.  

The father-poem of Gray’s elegy is “Lycidas” by John Milton who established the tradition of writing an elegy for a fellow poet. As well as borrowing from the traditional themes and tone of “Lycidas,” Gray mentions Milton by name halfway through the poem. Milton also established the pastoral tradition in English elegy (in other words, the practice of setting an elegy in the countryside). Gray picks up on both these things and also adds something new: a formal dimension to English elegy.  

Milton’s poem only initiated a genre tradition; in other words, he included particular content and a certain emotional progression a reader might expect to see in an elegy. These genre elements include a pastoral setting, a description of flowers and nature, a procession of mourners, an apotheosis of the dead, and consolation. Gray imitates many of these elements from Milton’s poem. Milton did not, however, establish any formal restrictions on elegy. As lush as the content of Milton’s poem is, the form is rather plain—“Lycidas” is written in unrhymed iambic pentameter, also known as blank verse. Gray writes “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” in four-line stanzas, also known as quatrains, with an abab rhyme scheme. The most famous genealogical elegies after Gray tend to imitate Milton’s content (which Gray is also, in part, imitating) and Gray’s form.  

The offspring of Gray’s poem tend to have interlocking rhyme schemes and sometimes even employ more elaborate rhymes than Gray did. Shelley writes “Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats” using nine-line stanzas that rhyme ababcdcdd (basically, each of Shelley’s stanzas is two of Gray’s stanzas plus a closing couplet). Alfred Lord Tennyson writes “In Memoriam A.H.H.” using a slightly shorter line (Tennyson uses iambic tetrameter) and the rhyme scheme abba. But just like Gray, Tennyson uses four-line stanzas, and he doesn’t change the rhyme scheme that much, so you can still hear a bit of Gray in the Tennyson poem. Finally, after rereading Gray’s poem many times, WWI soldier-poet Wilfred Owen wrote “Dulce et Decorum Est,” a poem that is both an elegy and a double sonnet and employs the rhyme scheme abab. In short, elegies written after Gray—especially elegies written for poets—tend to sound a lot like Gray’s poem, because these poems often make use of interlocking rhymes and use the same rhyme scheme as Gray.