"Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard" (1751)

Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard" (1751) was an immensely popular meditation on mortality that had a major influence on the early Romantics. The work has led Thomas Gray to be classified among the pre-Romantic Graveyard Poets.

"Elegy" is almost guaranteed to show up on the GRE Literature exam. Read this full text at least three times.

The poem is in four-line stanzas (ABAB), iambic pentameter.

Associate the following quotes with "Elegy:"

1. "Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest / Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood."

2. "The paths of glory lead but to the grave."

3. "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife"