Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard and Other Poems

New York : Grosse & Dunlap, 0001. Edition Not Stated. Hardcover (paper-covered boards). Good Condition. Small Octavo. Biding is tight Text body is clean and free from previous owner annotation, underlining and highlighting No foxing in this copy All edges neat and clean but a little browned Boards bumped on corners and a small amount of paper is missing on title on front cover. Note no date in the book. A hard-to-source copy. An elegy is a poem which laments the dead. Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” is noteworthy in that it mourns the death not of great or famous people, but of common men. The speaker of this poem sees a country churchyard at sunset, which impels him to meditate on the nature of human mortality. The poem invokes the classical idea of memento mori, a Latin phrase which states plainly to all mankind, “Remember that you must die.” The speaker considers the fact that in death, there is no difference between great and common people.

He goes on to wonder if among the lowly people buried in the churchyard there had been any natural poets or politicians whose talent had simply never been discovered or nurtured. This thought leads him to praise the dead for the honest, simple lives that they lived.