Despite what we learned in class today about “Elegy written in a Country Churchyard,” I found that the poem was more about the iniquities that result in death in that it obscures individuals, rather than the prospect that it elevates them by placing them on common ground. It is true that all humans must die; therefore making everyone the same in the end, but it also does not elevate any one class of man above the other. Instead, everyone is loped into the same category, making even that small distinction that the common people had going for them meaningless. I think Thomas Gray’s main comment on human nature is that all humans desire to be remembered despite their station in life, as shown when he says “even from the tomb the voice of Nature cries” (91). We know that the “Nature” mentioned refers to humanity, suggesting that it is human nature to cry out for attention and remembrance, even after death. At the end of the poem, the speaker finally resigns himself to his own inevitable fate that he must die. He then speaks of death in a more direct manner and laments how his circumstances in life kept him from being great. Despite this morose ending to the poem, it is also has an optimistic tone, such as when it says: “Heaven did a recompense as largely send: / He gave to Misery all he had, a tear, / He gained from Heaven (‘twas all he wished) a friend (122-124).
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