Formal Approach to Thomas Gray's Elegy (Eulogy) Written in a Country ChurchyardThomas Gray's poem "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is a very structured poem with a fixed number of lines per stanza and a specific rhyme scheme throughout the poem. The poem focuses on Gray's thoughts as he visits a country churchyard and ends with an epitaph written on one of the churchyard's headstones. The setting of a country cemetery automatically gives way to a small, unknown cemetery, and those who inhabit the cemetery will not be well-known people in the community or in American history. Gray's form and style allow the reader to see the churchyard they are in, and the metaphors and symbolism he uses open the reader's mind to see the world in a new way. The form of the poem is a very standard elegy, consisting of four stanzas and an abab rhyme scheme for each stanza. The form provides the visual image of a graveyard and all the plots lined up in a straight line line after line, and in doing so places the reader in the same setting they find themselves in. The setting is present not only in the form of the poem, but also in the first stanzas. The setting is in a churchyard after dark, on a very calm and silent night. The words Gray chooses to describe the churchyard present a vivid image, such as "Now the glittering landscape fades from sight, and all the air holds a solemn stillness..." (5-6). In these lines the reader can visualize images of the sun setting over the earth and the stillness of the night air from his perspective. The rhyme scheme of abab gives the reader a mental image of the plots in the cemetery. In the first stanza, for example, the final words are day, lea, wa...... middle of paper...... people in life may never be seen due to the environment in which they live or are born in. The irony of the poem is that the greatest things on earth may not be the ones we can see and believe to be the greatest. Gray's poetry pushes the reader to examine their own life to truly measure the things they deem great or wonderful, and look deeper into society to find the truly great things in their own life. Furthermore, it examines the fact that no matter how great a person is in life, they will simply become a “formless sculpture” (79) with a name, numbers, and a lasting quote that sums up that person's entire life. Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is a poem that truly explains that there are much greater things in life than what society deems to be great, and that one must judge for oneself what is or is not great based on one's own personal experiences..