Gray's Different Take on Death

In Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Thomas Gray comments on the mortality of man. The poem takes place in a graveyard, where the narrator examines the headstones of the dead. In true literary form, there is a segment that describes the finality of death. The tone is one of lament for the dead. The narrator ominously states, “For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn” (line 21). Basically, the narrator feels sorry for the dead because they’re missing out on so much. This sentiment is nothing new to poetry about death. There are many lines that follow the same kind of tone. However, Gray takes a sharp turn when he continues on, saying “Let not Ambition mock their useful toil” (line 29). Just because the people are dead now doesn’t mean they never lived. He goes on to discuss the dead as they were in life. They had their joys, sorrows, beauty, wealth, and other things when they were living too. Instead of looking down on the dead or pitying them, Gray forces his readers to see the truth; the dead in the churchyard are no different from what the currently living people will be like in a century. Instead of mourning a live lost, Gray states that we should celebrate a life lived.