Comparative Analysis of Poetry
Senior 6 · Literature in English
Comparative Analysis of Poetry
Lesson 5 of 5
25 min
Every culture has words for the dead: songs of lament at a funeral, a speech at a burial, a name and a few lines cut into stone. English poetry has two forms for them. The elegy is a long, thoughtful poem of mourning. The epitaph is a short inscription, real or imagined, for a grave. Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751) contains both: a long meditation on the poor buried around a village church, which ends with an epitaph.
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (stanzas 1, 4, 9 and 14)
Thomas Gray (1751)The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea,
The plowman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
The Epitaph (the close of the Elegy)
Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere,
Heav'n did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear,
He gain'd from Heav'n ('twas all he wish'd) a friend.No farther seek his merits to disclose,
Or draw his frailties from their dread abode,
(There they alike in trembling hope repose)
The bosom of his Father and his God.
A shorter poem shows the two forms meeting in another way. Ben Jonson's seven-year-old son Benjamin died of plague in 1603. Jonson's poem for him is an elegy in twelve lines that ends with an imagined epitaph:
On My First Son
Ben Jonson (published 1616)Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| curfew; knell | the evening bell; the slow ringing of a bell for a death |
| rude forefathers of the hamlet | the simple, uneducated villagers of past generations |
| heraldry | coats of arms, the signs of noble families |
| Science | here, knowledge or learning |
| child of my right hand | a translation of the Hebrew name Benjamin; also "dearest, most trusted" |
| exacted … on the just day | demanded back, like a loan, on the day it fell due |
Definition
| Point | Elegy (Gray's first 29 stanzas) | Epitaph (Gray's 3 stanzas; Jonson's couplet) |
|---|---|---|
| Length and purpose | Long; thinks through death, loss and the meaning of a life | Short; fixes a person's memory in a few lines |
| Speaker and audience | A solitary speaker thinking aloud at dusk ("to darkness and to me") | Speaks to a passer-by or reader ("No farther seek"; "Here doth lie") |
| Subject | Universal: the forgotten poor, and everyone ("The paths of glory lead but to the grave") | Particular: one person, his virtues, his end |
| Movement | From the scene, through meditation, to consolation | Summary and judgement in a moment |
| Style | Slow quatrains of iambic pentameter, long vowels, many images | Compressed, balanced, quotable lines |
The relationship between the forms is part of their meaning. Gray spends the elegy insisting that the poor deserve remembrance, that "Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen". Then he gives one of them, an unknown young man, a proper epitaph, as if putting his argument into practice. Jonson does the reverse: his poem moves towards the epitaph, and the epitaph surprises us. Instead of praising his son's virtues, the father calls the boy "his best piece of poetry", the finest thing he ever made. The tenderness of the joke makes the grief sharper.
Worked example
A model comparative paragraph (point: consolation)
Both poets look for comfort, but find it in different places. Gray's consolation is general and religious: the youth's merits and "frailties" both lie "in trembling hope" in "The bosom of his Father and his God", so that even an unknown life is safe in God's memory. Jonson's is more personal and more troubled. He tries a religious argument, that the boy has "'scap'd world's and flesh's rage" and should be envied, but the line before it, "O, could I lose all father now!", shows that he cannot stop feeling like a father. Where Gray's epitaph rests calmly in faith, Jonson's ends with a vow never to love anything "too much" again, a consolation that sounds more like a wound. Whereas Gray's epitaph comforts the reader, Jonson's reveals the writer.
Tip
When a poem contains another form, compare the two parts. Ask what the shift from elegy to epitaph does: it narrows the focus from all the dead to one person, and from the poet's thoughts to words meant for strangers.
Warning
"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" read in full by Tom O'Bedlam on the SpokenVerse channel. Listen for the change of voice at the Epitaph near the end.
Practice
Further reading
Sources and credits
