Lovely lines...Have a look,...

[Gorki]

Elegy written in a country churchyard...

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power..
And all that beauty, all that wealth ever gave..
Awaits alike the inevitable hour..
The paths of glory lead but to the Grave...
~Thomas Gray

How do you find these lines friends???

[Seasider]

Not to be pedantic or critical, but it would be easier to read and understand if you separated the title from the four lines of verse beneath.
It is a wonderful poem. I read it first at Primary School and it has been both a comfort and an inspiration to me ever since.

[Gorki]

Not to be pedantic or critical, but it would be easier to read and understand if you separated the title from the four lines of verse beneath.
It is a wonderful poem. I read it first at Primary School and it has been both a comfort and an inspiration to me ever since.

Thanks friend for your suggestion..I have edited the poem to separate the title from the rest of the lines...

Hello friends..
Kindly post any of your favorite quotes, excerpts, poems et al and share why you like these !!!

[Albion]

The title is:
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

often abbreviated to Gray's Elegy.

The churchyard is at Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, England

There are numerous other verses to this great poem
see www.poemswithoutfrontiers.com
many of which contain a phrase that has entered into and enriched the language.

Seldom have the thoughts of mortals at the brevity of life and the dignity of death been more poetically expressed. In particular, the opening verse relating to the closing of the day sets the elegiac mood perfectly and the poem admirably mingles loss and simplicity with the bucolic scene and the equality of man in death.

[Seasider]

I agree. I especially like this one.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of Ocean bear.
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the Desert air.

A great comfort when one receives yet another rejection slip.

Pope said

True wit is Nature to advantage dressed,
What oft was thought yet ne'er so well expressed.

That's true of Gray's Elegy in spades.

[Delta40]

I like this verse

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

[Seasider]

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire.
Hands that the rod of Empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.


I love iambic pentametres. A good poet can get so much thought into a confined space.
See how this poem is uniting people in India ,UK, Australia, Says something about the universality of its appeal.

[Gorki]

@Albion, thanks for the correction..I have edited the main post..

@Delta Kindly elucidate the gist of your favourite verse...I couldn't gather the real essence..

[Gorki]

I agree. I especially like this one.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of Ocean bear.
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen
And waste its sweetness on the Desert air.

Kindly tell the name of the composer of these verses..

[Gorki]

Another of my favorites...

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players,
They have their exits and entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then, the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden, and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice
In fair round belly, with good capon lin'd,
With eyes severe, and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws, and modern instances,
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
His youthful hose well sav'd, a world too wide,
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again towards childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

~William Shakespeare

[Delta40]

I like the vivid image when referring to the cemtery where we are laid to rest.

[Albion]

"The forefathers" is the subject of the verse and are the ancestors of those at present living.
"rude" is a poetic word of respect for "man of the country", "peasant", "untaught" or "bucolic" indicative of the primeval goodness of man.
A hamlet is a very small village consisting of only a few houses. More poetic than "village".
Each of the forefathers is sleeping, a euphemism for death. They are thus laid in narrow cells, poetic for graves.
The graves are covered with turf, ie grass, heaped in order to signify a modest burial place. Neither "heaves" nor "mouldering" should be taken literally but are associative of the things they represent. The heaps are not heaved from below by their occupants but deliberately placed by custom and design of the mourners to designate an otherwise unmarked grave. "Mouldering" merely suggests the decline of the body and, by association, the effluxion of time that has passed in this quiet and undisturbed place.
The churchyard is surrounded by elms, a type of tree that has both a rugged, ie rough, bark and is of substantial height. This thereby, through association, conveys the thought that the forefathers were also fine specimens of rugged build. A yew is an evergreen tree typical of many cemeteries and associated with sadness.

PS Read the poem to find Seasider's verse.
PPS The title is "in" not "on"
PPS The Shakespeare discussion should be another topic.

[Gorki]

@ Albion thanks for your explanation..
I have included shakespeare poem cause I admire it..Moreover this post entreats you to publish your favorite verses and excerpts...Hope you will share your likes as well..

[Gorki]

Here's one more...

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;—
I listen'd, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
~William Wordsworth...

Your views solicited...

[Seasider]

Here are some verses from In Memoriam by Tennyson. His dearest friend Arthur Hallam died at a young age abroad and was brought back to England on a ship. Tennyson wrote an elegy for him and these are my favourite lines from it. It imagines Hallam's body on the voyage home.

Calm is the morn without a sound,
Calm as to suit a calmer grief,
And only thro' the faded leaf
The chestnut pattering to the ground:

Calm and deep peace on this high wold,
And on these dews that drench the furze.
And all the silvery gossamers
That twinkle into green and gold:

Calm and still light on yon great plain
That sweeps with all its autumn bowers,
And crowded farms and lessening towers,
To mingle with the bounding main:

Calm and deep peace in this wide air,
These leaves that redden to the fall;
And in my heart, if calm at all,
If any calm, a calm despair:

Calm on the seas, and silver sleep,
And waves that sway themselves in rest,
And dead calm in that noble breast
Which heaves but with the heaving deep.