An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript

by Thomas Gray

Read An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript book online free and download in PDF, Kindle and ePub formats.

Copyright Status: Manuscript of this book is available in public domain and copyright already expired.

To some the eighteenth-century definition of proper poetic matter is unacceptable; but to any who believe that true poetry may (if not "must") consist in "what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed," Gray's "Churchyard" is a majestic achievement—perhaps (accepting the definition offered) the supreme achievement of its century. Its success, so the great critic of its day thought, lay in its appeal to "the common reader"; and though no friend of Gray's other work, Dr. Johnson went on to commend the "Elegy" as abounding "with images which find a mirrour in every mind and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.

Books by Thomas Gray

An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard (1751) and The Eton College Manuscript

Related Genres

Poetry   

Related Books

Collected Works of Poe
by Edgar Allan Poe

Leaves of Grass
by Walt Whitman

Paradise Lost
by John Milton