Gray was a transitional poet, one of the first to write on a romantic theme and break away from neoclassical themes, along with William Blake. However, his other poems never gained the critical acclaim of ''Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.'' William Wordsworth was influenced by Gray’s style and theme, especially the pastoral scenes.
In his poem, Gray deals with the broad theme of death. He uses his descriptions of the English countryside and the natural world to establish a melancholy tone. His descriptions also draw parallels between the evening (the end of the day and a time of rest) and death (end of life and a time of eternal rest). However, Gray spends more time describing the lives of the farming community than he does on descriptions of nature.
In Wordsworth’s works, such as "Tintern Abbey," nature is not only a backdrop or a poetic device, but the subject and the theme. In "Tintern Abbey," Wordsworth speaks of nature as “The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, / The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul / Of all my moral being.” In this and other poems, Wordsworth speaks of nature as an invigorating force that not only inspires him, but gives him life and heals him, even when it’s not present.
In contrast, Gray believes that everything, even nature, perishes in death and that nature’s beauty is often "wasted." He expresses that idea when his speaker states, "Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, / And waste its sweetness on the desert air." In Gray’s poetry nature remains in the background and is not the main theme, whereas in Wordsworth’s poetry, nature is a driving force.
Both Poems were written and published in the second half of the 18th century with 50 years separating them. Â Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard was the first to be published in 1751 and Tintern Abbey was published in 1798 near the turn of the century. Both poems use nature as a mirror of their own inner life, though the reflections that the mirror projects are different:
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is supposed to be an elegy (a poem that laments the death of someone) inspired by the sight of nature. However, the poem is more an ode that meditates about death and remembrance after death. It wavers between a stoic acceptance of death as an inevitable part of human existence in the wake of the death of several people that were close relatives or friends of the poet. Their own reminiscences awaken a reflection of what his own death will mean for other people and for his own existence. In it, nature elicits such meditation but actually causes an introspective outlook in the author’s gaze where the pathetic fallacy is completely absent and the poet’s musings are more solipsistic.
Tintern Abbey on the other hand is definitely not an elegy but a hybrid form that borrows a lot from the ode and from introspective monologues. In it, nature is more imbued with the projection of the poet’s emotions and thoughts, i.e. with his own pathetic fallacy. Nature here is actually a mirror that elicits a luminous outlook on existence which is introspective yet not existential in the classic sense. The perpetual renewal of nature and its cycles of life-death-resurrection. Indeed, restoration seems to be one of the key words. Nature here does not deny death but it acknowledges it as a phase in the cycle of restoration previously mentioned. Death is just a door to something else, a continuation of the self, with a more optimistic and luminous outlook on existence.
