An epitaph is a text commemorating a person who has died.
The epitaph of "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" is often taken
to refer to Gray himself and what he thought might be written about him after
his death. He declared:
This place rests his head on the heart of the Earth
A young man who does not know Fortune and Fame.
Scientific justice did not scoff at his low birth,
And melancholy marked him for his own.
But sometimes the verse is simply understood as the epitaph
of an unknown poet. So it's a puzzle.
However, if it refers to Gray, it makes sense because it
shows that he identifies with all the humble and anonymous souls that lie in
the rural graveyard. He does not place himself above them, but claims that he
is equally obscure. Like them, he was not born into fortune, which would be
high rank or money.
However, since he praises these simple people for their
dignified lives so little is known, it seems that he is also praising himself
in his epitaph. If he bragged about his obscurity, it would be ironic, since he
became a famous poet, still read centuries after his death.
The speaker in "Elegy is written in a country
cemetery" thinks about death. He looked at the graves in the cemetery and
searched for the people buried there. It's quite dark, a poem "memento
mori", which means contemplating one's own death. When he considers death,
the speaker considers what is important to him and so this gloomy poem about
death has its interpretation of a half-filled glass. There is a clear reverence
for the 'lower' classes as they live honest, simple lives and critique the
lavish lives and memorials of the rich.
Therefore, the poem is also the speaker's journey to find himself or the journey to find out what is important in life. And this is where the epitaph comes in. Most scholars agree that the epitaph is either Gray's or the speaker's personality. Given the epitaph's implied modesty, one would assume it was written by someone else; not the speaker himself. This means that another person looks at the speaker's death in a philosophical reflection on death, just as the speaker himself does throughout the context of the poem.
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