An Analysis of Thomas Grays Elegy. Interestingly, Gray does not share with his reader such details as who he is mourning. We can only guess as to the meaning of such references as the identity of youth. Perhaps Gray is visualizing the end of his own life? Whether that is the case or not the reader is left grieving for the brevity of life. This paper has five pages and one source listed in the bibliography.
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precisely for whom he mourns. In other words, the reader is left to guess at the identity of the "youth" whose epitaph make up the final twelve lines of the
poem. Is it the poet, foreseeing his own demise? Or, an ode to someone whom he loved? It is difficult to say, however, the emotions that the poem engenders in
the heart of the reader are more distinct. This poem leaves the reader feeling nostalgic toward the simple life of the agrarian past. The latter part of the poem
leaves the reader feeling pensive and reflective on the sanctity and transient nature of life, which causes one to identify with the unfortunate young man described at the end of
poem who has passed away in the flower of youth. The poem opens in a straight forward manner. In a lyric manner, Gray describes the tolling of the curfew
bell, cows mooing softly as they are driven home from pasture, and the weary plowman plodding his way home, which leaves "the world to darkness and to me" (line
4). The business of the world has ceased and, in this quiet world of night, only the narrator of the poem is still abroad, save such nighttime creatures as the
"beetle" and the "moping owl." The narrator walks beneath "rugged elms," where the turf is rounded into "many a moldering heap" (lines 13-14), which houses the "rude forefathers of
the hamlet" (lines 15-16). As this illustrates, Gray, in beautifully lyrical iambic pentameter, paints an image in the mind of the reader of a pastoral setting at the close
of day. Yet, there is also a sense of foreboding, as all human presence in this landscape departs save for the narrator who lingers in the church graveyard among the