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'The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day ...'Thomas Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' has been loved and admired throughout the centuries. First circulated to a select group of friends, it was rushed to official publication in 1751 in order to avoid pirated copies being sold without the young poet's permission. Praised by Samuel Johnson, reprinted over and over again in Gray's lifetime and recited by generations of school children, it is one of the most famous poems in the English language.This edition reproduces the exquisite wood engravings made by Agnes Miller Parker in 1938. Parker visited the churchyard at St Giles, Stoke Poges, where the poem is set, in order to make her sketches, and all thirty-two stanzas of the poem are accompanied by detailed full-page illustrations. Commemorating the 250th anniversary of the poet's death, this edition will not only bring new readers to the 'Elegy' but will also appeal to those already familiar with its riches.… (more)
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The poem is a meditation on human life, with its inevitable termination. Death is the leveler; it draws no distinctions, and indeed it absolutely removes all of them. In this reflection on stone, Gray's eyes settle on the Elegy of a humble rustic and how he wished to be remembered. The stone records, "He gave to misery all he had, a tear, / He gained from Heaven, 'twas all he wished, a friend."
So, we share a poem by one of the most educated men of 18th century Europe, gently igniting reflection about destiny and death, putting the play of assonance and alliteration to majestic use. The poem radically spreads actual majesty and grace to the lowly folk who never achieve fame and fortune. The poem gives full expression to humanitarian reality.
This throws posturing and the imbecility of empty pomp and pointless pretensions to power into stark relief. His treatment of the commoner was heroic and prescient -- twenty years after Gray's death in 1771, the French Revolution created the most robust middle class in the world with the freeing of the Serfs and land distribution. France became the most educated and most prosperous nation in the world. Sadly, recidivist tyrants subsidized a political takeover of the republic of France by a militarist "populist" thug. Napoleon was an out-of-control puppet who got millions of people killed.
But there was that ignition of consciousness. We owe much to Gray, his "friends", and his scholarship--the yearning for learning. And we are much cautioned by the vicious greed of a few wealthy puppet-masters who fancy they can control an armed puppet.