The title of this poem establishes the genre:
an . Interestingly, though, the person who is being mourned is never directly named. In the
beginning of the poem, the speaker is mourning ordinary people who are buried in this little
graveyard:
Let not Ambition mock their useful
toil,Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;Nor
Grandeur hear with a disdainful smileThe short and simple annals of the
poor.Gray chooses to write this poem in tribute to
the average, hardworking people who live lives of honor. This broke with the tradition of the
time of writing about the rich and famous. For, as the speaker comments, "The paths of
glory lead but to the grave."The subject
of the elegy then shifts to the speaker imagining some "kindred
soul" walking in a graveyard one day and encountering his own (the speaker's) tombstone.
What would he think? What would be said about him?
The subject of the elegy, therefore, is mortality itself. Whether rich or poor,
whether well-known or unknown, each person eventually faces the moment when "curfew tolls
the knell of parting day," which is thefound in the very first line.
Gray follows a steady form throughout this poem. Consider
stanza six: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.
Each line has five pairs of syllables in each line, and in each pair, the second
syllable is stressed. This is the pattern of the entire poem, which means the entire poem is
written in iambic pentameter.Upon further
inspection, each stanza is an example of heroic quatrain, which consists of four lines of iambic
pentameter. Initially it might seem ironic to use heroic quatrain to write of average people,
but the speaker warns:Let not Ambition mock their
useful toil,Their homely joys, and destiny obscure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smileThe short and simple
annals of the poor.The use of heroic quatrain is
intentional to demonstrate the value of people living "ordinary" lives. Gray believes
that average, ordinary people live with honor, work hard, and are greatly loved. They are,
therefore, heroic, and his poem honors them in its form.
This tight meter also serves another purpose: it beats on in steady rhythm for 32
stanzas. By doing so, it begins to mimic the tick-tock of a clock, serving as a further reminder
of the mortality of us all.
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