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2012
ushered in not only a new year – but also a year full of Friday the 13^th’s
– three in all, the most any year can have!  So what better time to take a look at the Graveyard Poets
and their fascination with death and melancholy than on a day filled with
mystery and dread?

The
Graveyard Poets were a group of over a dozen Neo-classical poets who wrote from
the 1740’s to 1790’s.  These
writers dwelled on mortality, religion and death, writing about coffins,
skulls, the solitude of death, bereavement, and man’s ‘despair of the human
condition,’ hoping to evoke feelings of fear and horror.  Sixteen poets fit this mournful,
melancholy description; their poems were laments for the dead.  The Graveyard Poets created a form of poetry
that became the predecessor to the Gothic and Romanticism genres; hence they
are sometimes called the ‘pre-Romantics.’

Thomas Warton

The Graveyard Poets included the better known Thomas Gray, Robert
Blair, and Edward Young, along with Thomas Percy, Thomas Warton, Thomas
Parnell, Thomas Chatterton, Oliver Goldsmith, Christopher Smart, James
MacPherson, William Cowper, William Collins, Joseph Warton, James Thompson,
Henry Kirke White, and Mark Akjenside.

Most
graveyard poems are similar to two styles of poems, an ode – a lyrical poem
dedicated to someone or something, and an English Ballad, which is sung.  They are descriptive, especially
concerning the physical horrors of death and the ache of bereavement.

His most famous poem

The
most well known of the Graveyard poets was Thomas Gray who wrote “Elegy Written
in a Country Churchyard.”  
Gray wrote the poem in 1750 after the death of a family member and the
near death of a friend.  The combination
of events caused him to begin an introspective study of mortality. Made up of
128 rhyming lines, the poem begins with the writer noticing the rich details in
the churchyard around him and ends with him contemplating his own death,
complete with epitaph.

Another
well-known Graveyard Poet was Scottish writer Robert Blair. His poem “The
Grave” consists of 767 lines of blank verse, dealing with death and the
graveyard.

Edward
Young’s nine-volume poem “The Complaint, or Night Thoughts on Life, Death and
Immortality,” became immensely popular and was transcribed into several
languages.

All
of the Graveyard Poets were able to catch the public’s attention through
thoughtful, albeit morbid prose that made each person take a closer look at
life – and possibly appreciate the inevitability of death.

~ Joy

 “ELEGY
WRITTEN IN

A COUNTRY
CHURCH-YARD”

The curfew
tolls the knell of parting day,

The
lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea,

The
ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

And
leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades
the glimmering landscape on the sight,

And all
the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save
where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

And
drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds:

Save that
from yonder ivy-mantled tower

The
moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such
as, wandering near her secret bower,

Molest
her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath
those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,

Where
heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,

Each in
his narrow cell for ever laid,

The rude
Forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The
breezy call of incense-breathing morn,

The
swallow twittering from the straw-built shed,

The
cock’s shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

No more
shall rouse them from their lowly bed.

For them
no more the blazing hearth shall burn,

Or busy
housewife ply her evening care:

No
children run to lisp their sire’s return,

Or climb
his knees the envied kiss to share,

Oft did
the harvest to their sickle yield,

Their
furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke;

How
jocund did they drive their
team afield!

How bow’d
the woods beneath their sturdy stroke!

Let not
Ambition mock their useful toil,

Their
homely joys, and destiny obscure;

Nor
Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile

The short
and simple annals of the Poor.

The boast
of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all
that beauty, all that wealth e’er gave,

Awaits
alike th’ inevitable hour:-

The paths
of glory lead but to the grave.

Nor you,
ye Proud, impute to these the fault

If Memory
o’er their tomb no trophies raise,

Where
through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault

The
pealing anthem swells the note of praise.

Can
storied urn or animated bust

Back to
its mansion call the fleeting breath?

Can
Honour’s voice provoke the silent dust,

Or
Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?

Perhaps
in this neglected spot is laid

Some
heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands,
that the rod of empire might have sway’d,

Or waked
to ecstasy the living lyre:

But
Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,

Rich with
the spoils of time, did ne’er unroll;

Chill
Penury repress’d their noble rage,

And froze
the genial current of the soul.

Full many
a gem of purest ray serene

The dark
unfathom’d caves of ocean bear:

Full many
a flower is born to blush unseen,

And waste
its sweetness on the desert air.

Some
village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast

The
little tyrant of his fields withstood,

Some mute
inglorious Milton here may rest,

Some
Cromwell, guiltless of his country’s blood.

Th’
applause of list’ning senates to command,

The
threats of pain and ruin to despise,

To
scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,

And read
their history in a nation’s eyes,

Their lot
forbad: nor circumscribed alone

Their
growing virtues, but their crimes confined;

Forbad to
wade through slaughter to a throne,

And shut
the gates of mercy on mankind,

The
struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,

To quench
the blushes of ingenuous shame,

Or heap
the shrine of Luxury and Pride

With
incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.

Far from
the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,

Their
sober wishes never learn’d to stray;

Along the
cool sequester’d vale of life

They kept
the noiseless tenour of their way.

Yet e’en
these bones from insult to protect

Some
frail memorial still erected nigh,

With
uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,

Implores
the passing tribute of a sigh.

Their
name, their years, spelt by th’ unletter’d Muse,

The place
of fame and elegy supply:

And many
a holy text around she strews,

That
teach the rustic moralist to die.

For who,
to dumb forgetfulness a prey,

This
pleasing anxious being e’er resign’d,

Left the
warm precincts of the cheerful day,

Nor cast
one longing lingering look behind?

On some
fond breast the parting soul relies,

Some
pious drops the closing eye requires;

E’en from
the tomb the voice of Nature cries,

E’en in
our ashes live their wonted fires.

For thee,
who, mindful of th’ unhonour’d dead,

Dost in these
lines their artless tale relate;

If
chance, by lonely contemplation led,

Some
kindred spirit shall inquire thy fate, —

Haply
some hoary-headed swain may say,

Oft have
we seen him at the peep of dawn

Brushing
with hasty steps the dews away,

To meet the
sun upon the upland lawn;

‘There at
the foot of yonder nodding beech

That
wreathes its old fantastic roots so high.

His
listless length at noontide would he stretch,

And pore
upon the brook that babbles by.

‘Hard by
yon wood, now smiling as in scorn,

Muttering
his wayward fancies he would rove;

Now
drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn,

Or crazed
with care, or cross’d in hopeless love.

‘One morn
I miss’d him on the custom’d hill,

Along the
heath, and near his favourite tree;

Another
came; nor yet beside the rill,

Nor up
the lawn, nor at the wood was he;

‘The next
with dirges due in sad array

Slow
through the church-way path we saw him borne,-

Approach
and read (for thou canst read) the lay

Graved on
the stone beneath yon aged thorn.’

The
Epitaph

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to Fortune
and to Fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And
Melacholy marked him for her own.

Large was his bounty, and his soul
sincere,
Heaven did a recompense as largely send:
He gave to Misery all he had,
a tear,
He gained from Heaven (’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.

                                    ~
Thomas Gray
(1716-71)