Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

1. What does the reader learn about the speaker from the description the shepherd gives in Stanzas 25-29 and the Epitaph at the poem’s conclusion? Create a bulleted list of all the qualities you can identify or infer about the speaker. Then, in a journal entry or freewrite passage, create a character analysis of the speaker. What kind of person was he? What makes you think so? Based on his character qualities, what seems to be important to him?

2. Identify one of the poem’s themes and explain how Gray’s use of literary devices illustrates that theme. Create an essay with an introduction, conclusion, and three body paragraphs. Your thesis statement should make a claim about the theme that Gray communicates using three specific literary devices. Focus each body paragraph on a separate literary device, showing how the usage of that device supports the theme.

3. John Milton’s elegy “Lycidas” started the tradition of writing an elegy about a fellow poet; it is considered the father-poem for Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” Milton’s “Lycidas” also established some characteristics for elegies: a countryside setting, descriptions of flowers and nature, a procession of mourners, an apotheosis of the dead (image of the dead person in heaven), and consolation for mourners.