Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

1. Gray uses several instances of personification in the poem. Identify his uses of personification and explain what each personified entity is said to be doing or not doing. Then, explain what each use of personification means; in other words, what message is Gray imparting through the line(s) in which personification is used? Model your answers after the following template:

_______________________ is personified through the characteristic(s) of__________________________________, which only a person can do/be.

Through this instance of personification, Gray is saying that _______________________

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________.

Once you have identified all the examples of personification you can find in the poem, compare your ideas with a partner. Add to your findings any examples your partner found that you missed, and vice versa. Then, discuss the following questions:

• What do all of the personification examples have in common?
• In what section of the poem do the majority of the instances of personification occur?
• What is the poet talking about in the section you identified above?
• How do uses of personification connect to the poem’s theme(s)?
• One characteristic of an elegy based on John Milton’s elegy “Lycidas” is the inclusion of a procession of mourners. How might Gray’s use of personification fulfill this requirement?

2. As previously mentioned, Gray’s elegy alludes throughout to an influential English elegy by John Milton. Read “Lycidas” by John Milton. As you read, annotate any similarities or differences you notice between Milton’s elegy and Gray’s. You may have to read it more than once, and turn back and forth between Milton’s poem and Gray’s poem as you look for similarities and differences. Compare your annotations with a partner, and include any of their findings that you might have missed.

Create a T chart in which you record a side-by-side comparison of each poem. Write down a bulleted list of the similarities and differences you found while annotating and working with a partner. Be sure to think about structural elements of the poem (form, meter, rhyme scheme) as well as themes, descriptions, setting, use of literary devices, and the objects/ideas/people mentioned.

Discuss your T chart with a partner, then as a class. Answer the following questions:

• Did you find more similarities, more differences, or about the same amount of each?
• Which poem did you like better, and why?
• Do you think Gray was copying Milton with his elegy? Why or why not?
• Gray mentions Milton’s name directly in his elegy. What purpose does this serve?

3. Gray devotes the first few stanzas of the poem to describing the countryside setting, and later gives more details about the setting when he imagines a shepherd (swain) observing the speaker’s funeral.

Create an artistic rendering of the setting based on the descriptions provided in the poem. First, search the poem for all the details you can find about the setting and highlight them. Think about time of day as well as location and the features of the surrounding area observed by the speaker.

Plan your drawing so that it reflects a particular vantage point. Decide which elements should draw the viewer’s attention. For example, will you highlight the presence of the owl? Or perhaps create a gravestone large enough to include the epitaph? You can emphasize particular features by placing them in the foreground or using color to make them stand out. Also consider which section/time of the poem you want to capture. Will your drawing relate to the shepherd’s observations later in the poem, or the speaker’s observations in the opening lines? Is it fully dark yet, or is the light just beginning to fade?

Once you have a general plan for your illustration, create your drawing, collage, digital design, painting, or other artistic rendering of the poem’s scene. Share your illustration with a partner and explain why you made the artistic choices that you did.