No other poet besides Gray has attained immortality with such a thin volume of poems. Gray’s genius was critical and would not permit anything except the best to appear in print. He constantly revised and refined his poems. Even when he felt he could improve them no further, his shy, sensitive soul prevented him from seeking publicity. He often published his greatest poems under the veil of anonymity.
Gray’s poetry has all the merits and defects of great art and labour. He even surpassed Pope and Tennyson in the way he polished his verses. Nothing short of absolute perfection would content him. His poetry therefore has all the finish and perfection of a marble statue. It is impossible to improve on it. At the same time, however, the grim truth is that it is sometimes cold and lifeless.
His early odes, Ode to Eton, Ode to Spring and Ode to Adversity, though exquisite in their own way, contain little intimation of his later work. “They have nothing of the spirit of romanticism and might have been written by any Augustan of sufficient talent.”
The genuine lyric quality we will never find in Gray. His poetry is neither spontaneous nor cheerfully melodious. The phrases are well-chiselled and exquisitely polished, but do not enchant us. The thrill which one of Keats’s epithets can give, one can never experience in the studied felicity of Gray’s verses.
Gray, though in several senses a precursor of the romantic revival in English poetry, has too many of the vices we associate with the neoclassical poets. The glossy, unfeeling diction that Wordsworth and others condemned appears too often in his poetry. He did not dare shake himself entirely free from the rigid conventions of that artificial and prosaic school.
Though not very daring, he is doubtless a rebel. He deliberately eschewed heroic couplets in his best poetry. He experimented with numerous metres and verse forms. His love of Nature was infinite and unique for its age. He has a real feeling for Nature’s lovelier things and often speaks with the glow of genuine emotion. His attitude toward people with low incomes and his attempts to use subjects not hackneyed in that age mark him as a poet of authentic charm and distinction.
The two Pindaric Odes show Gray well on the way towards romanticism. The two Odes, especially ‘The Bard’, are the most imaginative poetry Gray ever produced and were distinctly in advance of the age. In these Odes, Gray no longer follows his age; he strikes out ahead of it and helps to mould its literary tastes. The two odes palpitate with emotion and imagination, as they were written, “with a master’s hand, and a Prophet’s fire”. They take Gray a long step forward towards romanticism as they have romantic (1) flights of imagination, (2) feelings for the past, (3) love for wild nature, and (1) suggestions for the supernatural. However, the diction and language continue to be conventional and ornate. Gray, the romantic, can still not free himself from the shackles of classicism.
Another thing which no reader of Gray’s poetry can overlook is his fantastic scholarship. There is the stamp of the learned man in every one of his works. His learning never degenerates into pedantry. We are always enchanted, never bored.
Gray’s poetry will always be popular. Though critics may not rank him among the most significant poets, the sentimentality in poems like Elegy will always find an echo in all men’s hearts. Even poems like Descent of Odin and the two odes, The Bard and The Progress of Poesy, will continue to fascinate because of their vigour and absolute perfection of expression. He is undoubtedly a classic, one of English poetry’s immortals.
WORKS CITED
Gray, Thomas. The Complete Poems of Thomas Gray: English, Latin, and Greek. Edited by H. W. Starr and J. R. Hendrickson, Oxford University Press, 1966.
Gray, Thomas. The Poetical Works of Thomas Gray. Edited by John Bradshaw, Macmillan, 1891.
Poem Analysis. “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray.” Poem Analysis, https://poemanalysis.com/thomas-gray/elegy-written-in-a-country-churchyard/
“Thomas Gray.” Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thomas-gray.
Dr Aswathy Aravindakshan is a teacher, bilingual writer and artist with over two decades of experience in teaching English language and literature. She currently serves as Assistant Professor of English at NSS College for Women, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. Her blog, ashlit.in brings together academic resources, creative writing in Malayalam and English, and visual art. The platform features lecture notes, study materials, poems, reflections, short prose, and a curated collection of her paintings. Through this space, she seeks to foster learning, creativity, and meaningful engagement with literature and the arts.
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