Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

"Lycidas" by John Milton (1638)

The father-poem of Gray’s elegy, Milton’s “Lycidas” establishes the pastoral tradition in English elegy. Milton wrote “Lycidas” for Edward King, his classmate at Cambridge who drowned on his way to Ireland. King wasn’t a shepherd; in fact, he was going to enter the clergy, but Milton pretends he and King were both shepherd/poets in this elegy. Milton’s elegy has so much sway that nowadays the pastoral elegy and elegy are more or less synonymous in English poetry.  

"Sonnet [On the Death of Richard West]" by Thomas Gray (1775) 

Gray wrote this sonnet in 1742—the year his friend died—although it wasn’t published until much later. This poem has a similar rhyme scheme to “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” and includes pastoral fields, but it’s not as expansive, ambitious, or original as “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” 

"Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats" by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821) 

This elegy for a fellow poet picks up on the genre tradition Milton started and the formal tradition begun by Gray. In other words, “Adonais” includes all the content elements of Milton’s poem (including a call back to an earlier Greek poem, a pastoral setting, a description of flowers and nature, a procession of mourners, an apotheosis of the dead, and consolation) and the formal elements of Gray’s poem (Shelley writes in stanzas of regular length and uses the rhyme scheme ababcdcdd). 

"In Memoriam A. H. H." by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1850) 

Like Gray’s poem, Tennyson’s elegy is written in quatrains. Tennyson makes a few slight changes: He shortens the line to iambic tetrameter, and he uses the rhyme scheme abba. But the reader can still see and hear a hint of Gray in Tennyson’s famous elegy. 

"Dulce et Decorum Est" by Wilfred Owen (1920) 

As he was fighting WWI and writing elegies for soldiers who died, Owen set himself the task of rereading many famous genealogical elegies, including Gray’s; there are some striking similarities between Owen’s war elegies and Gray’s poem. For example, just as Gray mourned nameless farmers, Owen doesn’t name the dead soldiers about whom he writes. “Dulce et Decorum Est” mourns an anonymous solider using the rhyme scheme abab, just like Gray’s poem.  

"Anthem for Doomed Youth" by Wilfred Owen (1920) 

Gray’s poem begins with church bells and a moving herd of cows. In Owen’s poems, WWI soldiers are frequently described as if they were cattle. This poem begins: “What passing bells for those who die as cattle / —Only the monstrous anger of the guns.” Owen is taking the pastoral elements of Gray’s poem and making them refer to WWI soldiers. He’s also making them a lot less comforting than they were in the Gray poem, but he’s still borrowing from Gray.  

"The Send-Off" by Wilfred Owen (1920) 

This Owen poem uses the phrase “upland camp.” Owen is referencing Gray’s poet who often went “[t]o meet the sun upon the upland lawn” (Line 100), but adapting it for war time.