“It is flat, it is prose, whereas that above all ought to sparkle, or at…” — Thomas Gray | V2Melody

“It is flat, it is prose, whereas that above all ought to sparkle, or at least to shine.”

Gray's succinct advice on the importance of giving an elegy a memorable ending · Letter to William Mason, 24 March 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…

More by Thomas Gray

Poems by Thomas Gray

More remarks by Thomas Gray

“Extreme conciseness of expression, yet pure, perspicuous, and musical, is one of the grand beauties of lyric poetry.”

Summing up Gray's demanding ideal of clarity, brevity and musical expression in lyric verse · Letter to William Mason, 13 January 1758

“Nature and sorrow, and tenderness, are the true genius of such things; poetical ornaments are foreign to the purpose; for they only show a man is not sorry.”

Arguing that genuine elegiac feeling matters more than decorative poetic language · Letter to Horace Walpole, November 1747

“Our poetry, on the contrary, has a language peculiar to itself, to which almost every one that has written has added something.”

Presenting poetic language as a tradition continually enriched by individual writers · Letter to Richard West, 8 April 1742