Thomas Gray — a remark

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“This I have always aim'd at, and never could attain.”

A striking admission of artistic dissatisfaction immediately after describing his ideal of lyric concision · Letter to William Mason, 13 January 1758

About Thomas Gray

Thomas Gray

26 December 1716–30 July 1771

In the quiet churchyard of St. Giles' Church in Stoke Poges, Buckinghamshire, lies a simple grave that has drawn literary pilgrims for centuries. Here rests Thomas Gray (1716-1771), a man whose single greatest poem transformed him from an obscure Cambridge scholar into one of the most quoted poets in the English…

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