Talk:Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

Translations

Noting here a starting point for a paragraph or section on translations of this poem.

Sources

• The Foreign Language Translations of Gray’s Elegy (extensive website)
• Paper on the Vasilij Andreevic Zukovskij Russian translation
• Article on the Italian translations

Translators

• Vasily Zhukovsky - Russian
• Melchiorre Cesarotti - Italian
• Giuseppe Torelli - Italian
• Giacomo Zanella - Italian
• Christopher Anstey - Latin (one of the earliest translations)
• George Denman - Greek
• Ali Haider Tabatabai - Urdu

And obviously many more. Carcharoth (talk) 02:23, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Miscellaneous

Noting here that other articles contain the following that could be worth adding here (sources, if given, are in the articles linked), though some begin to verge on the trivial:

• Alfred Cellier: "In 1883, Cellier's setting of Gray's Elegy, in the form of a cantata, was produced at the Leeds music festival."
• William Thomas Beckford: art collector who purchased "William Blake's drawings for Gray's Elegy" (this would be one of several examples of famous illustrated editions of the Elegy)
• Dewitt Miller: book collector, includes the comment "news came of the splendid sum fetched by Gray's Elegy at the Hoe sale" (a few details of how collectable editions of the Elegy are and whether any are still in private collections)
• J. J. Lankes: "In 1940, Harper & Brothers published an edition of Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, with thirty woodcut illustrations by Lankes and an introduction by Pulitzer prize-winning poet Robert P. T. Coffin."
• Alan Wheatley: "His unforgettable readings of English poetry for the English by Radio audience include Thomas Gray's Elegy and readings from Shakespeare with Jill Balcon."
• Al Capp: "Engraved on his headstone is a stanza from Thomas Gray: 'The plowman homeward plods his weary way / And leaves the world to darkness and to me' "

A few starting points to see if references to these can be properly referenced and integrated into the article. Carcharoth (talk) 02:37, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Possible links and corrections

• Possible correction ... Under "themes" the article says "" Gray avoids mentioning the word "grave" "" ... what about the line "the paths of glory lead but to the grave"?Statalyzer (talk) 07:16, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Some suggestions below for terms and names that could be linked, but may need discussion first:

• Article: "responded to the Elegy with his "Imitations of Immortality" ode" ; suggested link Ode: Intimations of Immortality (note different title! A search on both titles just confused me even more)
• Article: "There were many translations of the poem into Latin, including one by Christopher Anstey, John Roberts and by Lloyd. It was translated into Greek by Gulielmi Cooke, John Norbury, Tew of Eton, Stephen Weston, and Charles Coote."; suggested links: Robert Lloyd (poet) (is this the Lloyd referred to here? - the article doesn't make clear who this Lloyd is, but from reading this, I suspect this is the right Lloyd). The others I've tried to find out who they were and when they wrote their translations, but there are so many translations, sometimes written by obscure figures, it is difficult to know who to focus on, but at least the date of the publication of the translations should be given, and possibly the nationality of the translator as well - gives the context rather than just a meaningless list of names that means nothing to most people.
• There are some more references that have crept in where a Harvard style reference is given, but when you look down to the list of books and sources consulted, the author mentioned is not listed! This is a bit shoddy, as I want to go and look up some of these sources, but I can't for instance look up the information above (referenced as "Nicholls pp. xxvii-xxviii"), as there is nothing saying who Nicholls is or what work of his is being referenced or what year it was published! Ditto for "Smith 1987", "Williams 1987", "Bloom 1987", "Hutchings 1987", "Johnston 2001", "Mileur 1987", "Holmes 1976", "Smith 1985", "Young 1783", "Arnold 1881", "Gosse 1918", "Anonymous 1896" (this is given in the text of the article, but should still be repeated in the bibliographic list), "Brady 1987", "Ketton-Cremer 1955", "Carper 1987", "Weinbrot 1978", "Golden 1988". That is a total of 18 sources that are incompletely cited in the references, making it impossible for anyone to verify what has been written here.

I have some other suggestions, but referring to authors and works without quoting the titles of the works in full is not good and this needs addressing before more text is added like this (diff to text added). Carcharoth (talk) 00:28, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Just a suggestion, but you might want to consider unblocking Ottava, if necessary on the strict condition he only edit this page and/or his own talk with this conversation taking place there. (You know as well as I that if you can get him to make a promise, he'll abide by it.) There's no real point having this discussion if the person you're addressing the questions to can't reply, especially with Malleus now hounded off the project altogether and unable to act as go-between. – iridescent 00:36, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I've only just got back from a day out. Let me catch up on what has been happening elsewhere. Carcharoth (talk) 00:41, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Iridescent in that it would be so much simpler to let Ottava fix it himself. He got me to fix some things for him but it's just needless effort. ^OohBunnies!Not just any bunnies... 02:13, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

In short, no. I appreciate the work that Ottava put in, but there are very good reasons he was banned, and for some people the small hole that is posted in the BAN policy for this kind of thing is too much of a loophole as is. I don't think there is any chance that Ottava will be unbanned early. It was the opinion of the committee when the ban happened that Ottava and Wikipedia were best served by Ottava completely disengaging from Wikipedia for a time, and from all reports and actions, he is unwilling or unable to. SirFozzie (talk) 07:59, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

This is getting off-topic for this talk page. May I suggest that Iridescent, OohBunnies and SirFozzie take this discussion elsewhere? I would like to make sure this talk page is reserved for discussing content issues only, as the other issues have the potential to distract from the editing of the article. Carcharoth (talk) 11:09, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

It may seem like needless effort to you, OohBunnies!, but if you make edits like this, you need to (a) attribute that content (if you did not write it yourself, you need to link to where it came from - see the 19:54, 29 March 2010 revision by Iridescent for an example of how to properly attribute such content). And it is a requirement that the person adding content from elsewhere checks it thoroughly to see if it makes sense, and that person should also ensure the added content is seamlessly integrated with the existing article (which had been edited since the original import). The failure to import the bibliographic listings is a basic and fundamental error, and it falls to you, as the editor who imported the content, to fix that. I can provide a listing on the talk page, but it should be you that goes and fixes it in the actual article itself, so you are fully aware of how to do such imports properly. Carcharoth (talk) 11:06, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

When I said 'needless effort' I was referring to others having to upload Ottava's content for him, but I will say no more. In regards to my basic and fundamental error, I had been told by Ottava that Malleus was fixing it. Malleus has now left, but I am unfortunately not omniscient. Although being honest, something that will probably get me shat on, if you have the list and the ability to fix it I'm not sure why you feel the need to leave it to me. To teach me a lesson? It makes me want to tell you to get over yourself. ^OohBunnies!Not just any bunnies... 21:46, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry if I've offended you. Part of the reason I was so insistent here is that attributing and integrating such imports is a complex business that many Wikipedians would find difficult, but it is something that does need to be done properly (and you did a good job of the rest of the import). If you are not sure how to do what I am referring to above (the bit about attribution in the edit summary really does need fixing by using a new edit summary to refer back to the unattributed edit, or by making a list of the imports on a subpage here), would you like me to ask someone else to do it? I could ask Juliancolton (who assessed the article). If he is willing to work with us here, then between the three of us, we should be able to do a good job and take this article to the next level, though it will take some co-ordination to integrate things properly. It is also entirely possible that this kind of arrangement just doesn't work in practice (for example, other editors leaving, as Malleus did, is something that can't be anticipated). But you never know until you try. Carcharoth (talk) 23:31, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I added an external link for Robert Browning poem Love Among the Ruins in the section under: Influence; Poetic parallels. There is an extra space after Love Among the Ruins, which. . . Could someone fix it and remove the extra space. I edited it on my iPad and couldn’t fix it. 5:30, EST US 30 December 2018 — Preceding unsigned comment added by GustavM (talk • contribs) 10:34, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

I've moved the in-line link to a ref and linked Robert Browning. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:45, 30 December 2018 (UTC)

Bibliographic sources

As far as I can tell, the sources being referred to in the text (but not listed in the bibliographic listings) are:

• Nicholls - Nicholls, Norton (editor). The Works of Thomas Gray. William Pickering: London, 1836.
• "Smith 1987" - Smith, Eric. "Gray: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" in Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
• "Williams 1987" - Williams, Anne. "Elegy into Lyric: Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" in Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
• "Bloom 1987" - Bloom, Harold. "Introduction"in Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
• "Hutchings 1987" - Hutchings, W. "Syntax of Death: Instability in Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"in Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
• "Johnston 2001" - Johnston, Kenneth. The Hidden Wordsworth. New York: Norton, 2001.
• "Mileur 1987" - Mileur, Jean-Pierre. "Spectators at Our Own Funerals" (need to check the publication year is 1987)
• "Holmes 1976" - 'Holmes, Richard. Shelley: The Pursuit. London: Quartet Books, 1976.
• "Smith 1985" - Smith, Adam. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. Indianpolis: Liberty Fund, 1985.
• "Young 1783" - Young, John. A Criticism on the Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard. London: G. Wilkie, 1783.
• "Arnold 1881" - Arnold, Matthew. The English Poets Vol III. London: Macmillan and Co., 1881.
• "Gosse 1918" - Gosse, Edmund. Gray. London: Macmillan and Co., 1918.
• "Anonymous 1896" (Review - 12 December 1896 - The Academy)
• "Brady 1987" - Brady, Frank. "Structure and Meaning in Gray's Elegy" in Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
• "Ketton-Cremer 1955" - Ketton-Cremer, R. W. Thomas Gray. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955.
• "Carper 1987" - Carper, Thomas. "Gray's Personal Elegy" in Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987.
• "Weinbrot 1978" - Weinbrot, Howard. "Gray's Elegy: A Poem of Moral Choice and Resolution" (need to check the publication year is 1978)
• "Golden 1988" - Golden, Morris. Thomas Gray. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988.
• "Bieri 2008" - Bieri, James. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.

That, as far as I can tell, is the list that should have been added along with this edit. I'll point OohBunnies! to this section now so that they can look at this list and see if they agree or disagree. If there is no way of ascertaining whether this bibliographic listing is correct, the material added in the edit I've referred to is not properly sourced and will have to be removed, though hopefully it won't come to that. Carcharoth (talk) 11:34, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

I was asked to comment here, so I'll offer my preliminary thoughts. I'm fairly confident Ottava will find some way to address this issue off-wiki to confirm whether or not the above sources are correct and see to it that all information is properly sourced. Failing that, I suggest tentatively reverting the recent article addition and gradually adding it back in as we access relevant source and verify the content. The bigger issue, though, is the lack of proper attribution, which could make that potential solution impossible. In that case... I don't know what can be done. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 01:38, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Here's my preliminary thought. Ottava shouldn't have to be addressing this issue off-wiki. Malleus Fatuorum 01:48, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

That issue is not something that should be discussed here. This is a talk page to discuss the content (not the contributors). By all means go and file appeals, but don't mix that in with the content issues here. The real issue here is that the importing was done incorrectly. Malleus, if you copied an article from somewhere else and added it to Wikipedia, would you leave off half the books in the bibliographic listing at the end when importing it? No, you wouldn't, so can we please get that issue addressed first. Carcharoth (talk) 02:08, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Julian, for the source and how to correctly attribute, see the 19:54, 29 March 2010 edit to the article. What is needed is for an edit summary like the one used there to be used to correctly attribute the content added with the 01:38, 8 April 2010 edit, and for the missing content to be integrated with the existing article. It is complicated, but that is what happens when you end up with two articles developing in parallel. I'm not convinced it works in practice. I think those who create content off-wiki for importation need to accept that at some point it becomes impractical for them to contribute additions to the article. The most practical way to do so is to have synchronisation, which would require importing versions of this article back to the source, but that would not really be appropriate here (not that there is any way to prevent it). I think the best that can be done is a single one-time import (or in this case, two imports), and then leaving the article to develop here as best as it can. Trying to do more updates than that becomes difficult to do - where is the line drawn between a single import, regular updates, and proxy editing? That's why I'm not going to do any of this myself, though I am prepared to edit the content that exists here. Carcharoth (talk) 02:20, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Frankly, I think that you're being rather precious in asking others to fix things you're perfectly able to fix yourself. Malleus Fatuorum 03:02, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

<shrug> Lots of people are capable of fixing this article. Have you wondered why no-one is rushing to do so? We all look a bit silly standing around saying others should fix things that we are all capable of fixing. But I've made my position clear: I'm willing to edit content like this (just as any editor can edit it) and add to such content once it is clearly going to stay here, but half-imported content is not acceptable, and I'm not going to import material into article-space myself (I would need to read the books in question before being willing to do that), though (as with the listing above) I'm prepared to make suggestions as to what needs importing to complete half-done imports, and I'm willing to accept on trust that others have reviewed this material and it is OK. But there is a big difference between trusting the imports and edits of other editors and doing the imports yourself. Carcharoth (talk) 07:59, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Depends on the circumstances of the import. Leaving aside the irrelevance of who wrote the original, the circumstances in which "import" is a clear positive is when the version to be imported is a clear and unequivocal improvement on the original regardless of any potential errors—this is why we currently have 3,500 articles cut-and-pasted from the Biographical Directory of Federal Judges, 8,800 articles cut-and-pasted from the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships and a staggering 12,000 articles cut-and-pasted from the 1911 Britannica, despite the fact that we know all three sources are biased, outdated and riddled with errors.

This article in particular, however, has reached its maintenance phase; I do agree with you that improvements now need to be demonstrable improvements, regardless of where they've ultimately come from. If that means it's not as good as it could be, that's a price inevitably paid in valuing verifiability over accuracy, and if you don't accept VNT and the thinking behind it, then Wikipedia probably isn't the place to be. – iridescent 19:12, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

WP:VNT? Ah, I haven't seen that abbreviation used in ages. To address what you said, I agree absolutely when the errors are brought over with the original - in most cases, such as good-faith imports like this and the ones you mention, we have to accept such errors and fix them as they are found. But what I am pointing out here is errors introduced during the importation process. I've been spot-checking and found a few more, tedious though it is (did I ever mention I won prizes for nit-picking?). Carcharoth (talk) 00:08, 3 May 2010 (UTC) The preceding statement included small elements of sarcasm.

I've incorporated the missing sources from this revision. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 22:51, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Still a few missing (they are listed on the talk page of where you got that from). And we've also gone from having sources mentioned in the text and footnotes (but not listed in the bibliographic listing) to having sources mentioned in the bibliographic listing (but not mentioned in the text and footnotes). Which is actually an improvement, if you think about it (instead of referencing missing sources, you now have extra sources that can be cited as the text cited to them is located and added). This is still not ideal synchronisation, but it is getting there. I'll do an exhaustive cross-check, and list what doesn't match up in a new section below. Carcharoth (talk) 00:12, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I'm just not getting this. Why not just fix it? Malleus Fatuorum 00:31, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I've explained this before. I'm not going to transfer sources from an off-wiki draft to here if I don't have those sources to consult. Others do this either on good-faith (that the originator of the text is reliable) or after checking for themselves. I am willing to help, and enjoy, tidying things up, but when I add sources and sourced information, I prefer to have those sources available. Carcharoth (talk) 01:00, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

More synchronisation of bibliographic listing and footnotes

The follow bits in the bibliographic listing and footnotes don't quite match up with where the text originates from.

In bibliographic listing but not footnotes

• Clyde de L. Ryals (1996)
• Graham Hough (1953)
• Herbert Starr (1968)
• W. K. Wimsatt (1970)
  •  Done

In footnotes but not bibliographic listing (all listed here)

• Smith (1987) [this is Eric Smith, not the Adam Smith for 'Smith (1985)']
• Williams (1987) [this is the same Anne Williams for 'Williams (1984)', but a different book by her]
• Bloom (1987)
• Hutchings (1987) [Note that the text says Hutchings was speaking in 1984, but the reference publication year is given as 1987]
• Mileur (1987)
• Brady (1987) [Note that the text says Brady was speaking in 1965, but the reference publication year is given as 1987]
• Carper (1987) [Note that the text says Carper was speaking in 1977, but the reference publication year is given as 1987]
• Weinbrot (1978) [Note that one reference is dated 1978 and the other is dated 1987]
• Bieri (2008)
  •  Done

It seems the proliferation of references dated 1987 are to the collection by Bloom published in 1987 (Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1987), and the dates in the text are (correctly) to the date of first publication of the works and the dates in the references are (correctly) to the date of the actual publication being consulted. Making that clearer would be good, to avoid confusion. In the case of the Weinbrot reference to two separate years, the 1978 date should either be replaced with the 1987 date (if both references are to Weinbrot's essay from the 1987 collection), or the separate 1978 work should be identified. Carcharoth (talk) 01:23, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

PS. Apologies in advance for being so nit-picky about this, and for not making the fixes myself. It is complicated sorting through these sources, which is why it would be great to have others double-checking this. Many thanks to anyone who sorts out the synchronisation here. Carcharoth (talk) 01:28, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

OK, I added more (perhaps all?) of the books. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 02:18, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! I think you did get all of them, and I'm now happy with this article (though the Weinbrot references still need the years checking, one is 1978 and the other in 1987, and there is still confusion over the "Imitations of Immortality" versus "Intimatations of Immortality" bit). Hopefully someone will consider those bits, along with the earlier suggestions I made above (the first two sections on this page), but now the bibliographic confusion has been sorted I'm going to leave this article alone for a bit now. Could you ping me when someone puts it forward for GA or FA? Carcharoth (talk) 03:21, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I've fixed those two issues as per information I've received off-wiki. Are the attribution issues from that initial edit fixed? –Juliancolton | ^Talk 03:44, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

I think between your edits and the comments on this talk page, the attribution issue is largely fixed. You could do a dummy edit saying that edit x should be attributed to source y, but the edit field might be too small. I linked the Intimations of Immortality ode - maybe that could be expanded next? It is certainly a great name for a poem, though I'm still puzzled as to what 'Imitations of Immortality' is - seems to be something different or the same or similar. Carcharoth (talk) 14:56, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Never :) –Juliancolton | ^Talk 16:42, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Prose issues

Upon request, I went through the prose in the article and found the following issues:

• Please fix comma use. Commas should be used in compound sentences and not in those that aren't compound. The following sentences are missing commas:

• • "The events dampened the mood during that Christmas and Antrobus's death was ever fresh in the minds of the Gray family."
  • "On 3 June 1750, Gray moved to Stoke Poges and on 12 June he completed Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."
  • "By February 1751, Gray received word that William Owen, the publisher of the Magazine of Magazines, would print the poem on 16 February without his approval and the copyright laws at the time would not allow Gray to stop the publication."
  • "The theme does not emphasise loss like other elegies and the focus on nature is for setting and not a primary component of the poem's theme."
  • "His description of the moon, birds, and trees lack the horror found in the other poems and Gray avoids mentioning the word "grave" and instead uses other words as euphemisms."
  • "During the summer 1750, Gray received so much positive support regarding the poem that he was in dismay but he did not talk about the poem in his letters until the 18 December 1750 letter to Wharton."

• "The loss was compounded by news that followed a few days afterward that Horace Walpole, Gray's close friend, yet one he just recently disputed with, was almost killed by two highwaymen who demanded his money." -- > "The loss was compounded a few days after by news that Horace Walpole was almost killed by two highwaymen who demanded his money. Thhough Gray recently disputed with him, Walpole was still a close friend."

• "Gray's life was surrounded by loss and death, and he knew that many people around him died painfully and alone." - "Gray's life was surrounded by loss and death, and many people around him died painfully and alone."

• "As a side effect, the events also caused Gray to spend much of his time contemplating his mortality." - 'also' is unnecessary. You already have 'as a side effect' in there, so using 'also' in there is redundant.

• "With spring nearing, Gray questioned if his own life would enter into a sort of rebirth cycle or if, he was to die, if there would be anyone to remember him." -- "With spring nearing, Gray questioned if his own life would enter into a sort of rebirth cycle or, should he die, if there would be anyone to remember him."

• "It was so popular that it was reprinted twelve times and reproduced in many different periodicals until 1765,[9] including in Gray's Six Poems (1753), in his Odes (1757),[10] and volume four of Dodsley's 1755 compilation of poetry." -- needs "in" before "volume four" to maintain parallelism.

• Instances of "stated" is in the article, a word to avoid. Replace with "said" or similar.

• The quote in the first paragraph of "Composition" section, that end-quotation needs to go after the full stop.

• "Mason's argument was only a guess" - I'd remove "only" in there, not needed.

• "The stanza form, quatrains with an ABAB rhyme scheme, was common to English poetry and used throughout the 16th century while any foreign diction that Gray relied on was merged with English words and phrases to give them an "English" feel." -- either add a comma before "while" or split that sentence up as it's a bit drawn-out.

• Would insert a comma before "while" in the following two sentences: "The early version ends with an emphasis on the narrator joining with the obscure common man while the later version ends with an emphasis on how it is natural for humans to want to be known. The later ending also explores the narrator's own death while the earlier version serves as a Christian consolation regarding death."

• First quote in the "Late 18th and early 19th-century response" subsection, the end-quotation needs to go after the full stop.

• Paragraphing especially in the second half of the "Late 18th and early 19th-century response" is fairly choppy. Try and either expand or combine paragraphs if you can. In particular, avoid one or two-sentence paragraphs.

–MuZemike 19:00, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

These have been resolved, to the best of my knowledge. –Juliancolton | ^Talk 20:46, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

GA Review

This review is transcluded from Talk:Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.

I will make what I believe to be minor, uncontroversial copy edits as I review the article. Please feel free to revert them if you disagree with them. Si Trew (talk) 06:03, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Reviewer: Si Trew (talk) 06:00, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Excuse me for taking so long to get round to this, but it is a long article deserving full attention.

GA review (see here for criteria)

1. It is reasonably well written.

   a (prose): } b (MoS):

   Some very minor MOS issues on hyphens and section titles, generally pretty good. Prose sometimes is more complicated than need be. Copy edit follows.

   done All these have been addressed by nominee, myself and another editor.

2. It is factually accurate and verifiable.

   a (references): b (citations to reliable sources): (OR):

   Good references, assume well referenced, have checked a couple in print. A few minor POV statements covered below, but I don't think these are OR as such.

   However there is one reference to Anonymous, 1896, which must fail WP:V. I think this is easily fixed by including the fuller reference (the magazine in which it is published) in the reference, it's in the text itself.

3. It is broad in its coverage.

   a (major aspects): b (focused):

4. It follows the neutral point of view policy.

   Fair representation without bias:

   A few statements that may seem mildly POV (even if not intended to ) if not referenced; or the references being too far away from statements for them to be obviously from the referee not the WP author. But I am sure this is just through wording issues and not POV pushing, so can be easily fixed.

5. It is stable.

   No edit wars, etc.:

   No reverts or undos on edit history, collaboration of several editors.

6. It is illustrated by images, where possible and appropriate.

   a (images are tagged and non-free images have fair use rationales): b (appropriate use with suitable captions):

   File:PortraitThomasGrayByJohnGilesEccart1747to1748.jpg is disputed copyright on Commons

   File:Gray's_Monument.JPG is tagged as available on Commons now but is own work and so not disputed

   I'm going to assume the disputed copyright is a Commons problem and it's free for use while it's there, or will be deleted if the copyright is found not to be in accord with GFDL/CC-SA.

8. Overall:

   Pass/Fail:

   Happy to pass it, congratulations on everyone's hard work on this article. Si Trew (talk) 06:46, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Typos and bibliography

I have corrected a handful of obvious typos, but when I reached the bibliography section I stopped dead - much too big a job to put that right. - Tim riley (talk) 21:30, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for that. I must admit I got sidetracked but I picked up the version from this morning, which I have been copy editing for all morning (it is worth it, it is a good article if not a Good Article yet) so that should have been after your changes. Si Trew (talk) 13:36, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Copy review

Deliberately for the purpose of review I read this in full for the first time from a paper copy, and made notes as I went, to take an innocent's eyes on the article. This probably, then, seems very picky, but I can only say I came to this as an intelligent but ignorant reader and so if something jarred with me I noted it down, suggested an alternative, but by no means do I insist the alternative is the best.

Initially I had intended to make uncontroversial copy edits as I went along, but I feel not many would be seen as truly uncontroversial. So I leave them here.

On the whole I think it is a little underlinked (but only a little).

It also seems to me that this is written largely in British English but has had some things inserted in American English. Taking that tack, I have suggested a few minor copy changes where the text is unmistakably correct American English but incorrect British English.

Si Trew (talk) 14:55, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Lead

• "An elegy in name, the poem is not an elegy in the true sense". I think by "the true sense" what is meant here is that it is not written in a certain poetic form (elegiac couplets)? Can we not just say so?
• stoic, link?
• There seems to be a general shying away from pronouns here. Last para, for example, "it failed to resolve the questions raised by the poem, or that the poem did not..." could be just "it failed to resolve the questions it raised, or [it] did not..."

I've done these. Si Trew (talk) 19:11, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Background

• "many people around him died painfully and alone". How could they die alone if they were around him?
• Horace Walpole, I think we need a link here, or at least state briefly his relationship to Gray. I've linked him, put "his childhood friend" (or something), and added a couple of refs (to Mack 2000).
• "during that Christmas" -> "that Christmas"
• "As Gray began to..." -> "as he began to..."
• reputation of individuals" -> "individuals' reputations" (or at least "reputations of individuals")
• Link Stoke Poges
• "letter to Horace Walpole and sent it to him" -> "letter he sent to Horace Walpole".
• "Before the final poem was published" -> "Before the final draft [or version] of the poem was published"
• "Owen... without his approval". While the approval obviously means Gray's, it attaches to Owen, so Owen would pubish a poem without his own approval. Move "without his approval" up; "Gray received word that, even without his approval, William Owen would..."
• "volume four" can we have "Volume IV"? Someone had already done this
• "The revised version of 1768 was the version" -> "was that"
• "where he attended the Sunday service". Vague. I imagine there was more than one. Communion, matins, what? "Attended each Sunday"?
• "There were many translations of the poem into multiple languages". I doubt the translations were macaronic, so the "multiple...many" is excessive. How about "The poem was translated into many [other] languages"? I cut "into multiple languages" – the following sentence shows that.
• "The poem was eventually translated into Spanish", a little bit POV: cut "eventually". Also "by 1823" and "by 1882" can these not just be "in 1823", "in 1882"?

Mostly except for the first one (dying painfully and alone), and the Sunday service. Si Trew (talk) 19:30, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

I changed the wording on the dying bit and as for the Sunday service issue the source says: "on the Sunday following his arrival in Buckinghamshire, attended regular services at the parish church, where both he and his mother would have had the opportunity to pause and pay their respects at the grave of Mary Antrobus" (p. 391, Macks 2000). ^OohBunnies!Not just any bunnies... 23:43, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Composition

• "The origins of the poem were most likely found..." there is something not right here, though it is grammatically correct. I just feel that with the following sentence having Mason finding them there, the "most likely" is somehow misplaced; I can not put my finger on it, but somehow it seems out of place. "It seems most likely that the poem has its origins in ..."?
• "William Mason, who knew Gray and discussed Gray in...", -> "discussed him" (or "his work")
• "22 stanza" needs hyphen if it is going to match "32-stanza" earlier. WP:MOSNUM?
• Gray's commonplace book could do with a link or at least be uncapped; particularly because as "Gray's Commonplace Book" it might give the impression it was a published book of that name (like Dickens' Household Words, for example).
• "more complete", can something be more complete? It is either complete or incomplete. But the meaning is clear enough. "Nearer completion" would not be right. It might be best to leave it as it be.
• "There are two possible ways the poem was composed". This jars with me after the first para saying the origins of the poem were most likely etc; I wasn't then expecting to be thrown into a controversy after it having been settled on the most likely way. Would it be better somehow to say from the outset there were two possible ways? So that the section starts along the lines of "There are two possible ways", continues "The most likely origin", then the alternative?
• "wrote to Mason and claimed" -> "to claim"
• "The two did not resolve", I would make this start of new para. "Disagreement of the events" -> disagreement about? over? or just cut "of the events" (although I should not like to suggest they were generally disagreeable to each other).
• "Regardless, Gray's outline". Gray's outline is not regardless. "Nevertheless" or "But".
• "sometime in 1746" -> "some time". "sometime" means "occasional" or "at one time", "erstwhile".
• "The epistolary evidence verifies" -> "the letters show". (Phew!)
• "the likelihood of Walpole's dating the composition". Is it uncertain that Walpole dated it? So was it that Walpole's date is probably right, or that he probably dated it at all?
• ",as Gray said in the 12 June 1740 letter that Gray saw". This clause is a mess and I cannot really make out what it means. First, make this a new sentence. Then, who saw the letter and who wrote it? "As Gray said in his letter of 12 June 1740, he saw....". Is Gray really meant here as the person seeing it, or Walpole (its addressee, I think, and if so probably reiterate it: in his letter to Walpole). Which two were not on speaking terms, there are three: Gray, Walpole and Mason? I presume it was Mason and Gray who were not on speaking terms, but the clause suggests it was Gray and Walpole. This is not pedantry, I assure you, I am genuinely confused who is doing what here. The more I re-read it the less sense I get from it, who saw what and said what.
• "which alludes to" is there any way to make that stronger than "alludes"? If it says he is writing it, then just say so. "The only other letter in which Gray discusses the poem is that to Wharton of 11 September 1746, where he says he is working on it".

Mostly done, but it still needs looked at the structural points I've not ticked, "which alludes to", who's writing the letter about who was not on speaking terms with whom, and the general rehash to make the two possible ways more balanced, or at least not to surprise the reader with a second hypothesis after it seems we will only have one. Si Trew (talk) 19:39, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Had a stab at fixing them all except the last one. The source uses "alludes": "we recognize in this reference to 'a few autumnal Verses' of 'no poem except the Elegy to which Gray could be alluding'", p. 397 Mack 2000. ^OohBunnies!Not just any bunnies... 00:08, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Genre

• I see now that we are saying Gray's poem is not in the elegiac tradition of Theocritus. So my comment about the lead stands, where it says it is not an elegy "in the true sense", if this is what is meant by the true sense. I can understand that we don't want to throw Theocritus into the lead, but I still thing "in the true sense" is too vague there.
• "mention of shepherds" -> shepherds. The others are also mentioned, so either mention them all, or let them stand each as mentioned.
• "and the focus on nature is for setting and". This just sounds ugly to me, and takes "setting" to be a noun, which is unexpected. "And the focus on gelatin is for setting". How about "its being set in nature", but I have a feeling the word "setting" here could be bettered.
• "although not necessarily for one individual". I think we have established it is not at all about one person, so this is wordy and rather legalese. How about "although not about a particular person"? I would go farther to "more about life and death in general than any particular person", but I do realise that is stretching it rather. If the reference 10 (Benedict 2003 p. 17) (where I am AGF) says those exact words, keep them but quote them.
• "In its use of the English countryside", not sure if it used it that much in a literal sense (the poem doesn't itself go around farming or setting fire to foxes or whatever, so "use" is a bit vague here). I realise I am being very picky here, could we just not lose the whole clause? Or "By evoking the English countryside", how's that?
• "In J. Dyer's Grongar Hill, and later [in another work] ... and..." If this is a list there are two many "and"s, though the point is rather subtle, if not then the middle work Beattie's is a parenthesis, and that's no good either, for ", and later in Beattie's" just put a comma, or ", then later in ". Either it's a list or it isn't but don't lay false scent.
• Last para "Additionally, ", I jar at the use of this at the start of a para, though there is nothing wrong with it grammatically. Probably I jar at it for the opposite reason you may expect; there is nothing wrong with starting a sentence with "And" or "But", but this is out of the frying pan, into the fire. By not daring to use "And" it says "Additionally" instead. Just cut the word, the para stands well enough without it. "The poem is connected..."
• "To the ode tradition". Can we have "ode" as a modifier? It sounds a bit ugly to me but I can't find an adjectival form for "ode" in the same way there is, for example, for "elegy" (elegiac). No dictionary I have (Collins, OED, Websters) lists one, so I'll accept it as the best way to put it if substitutes would be worse. (well, it's linked, which is probably all we can do)
• "And partly relied on the diction of Petrarch". I'm not sure it relies on his diction, since nobody knows how he spoke. His metre? Also why not just Petrarch's diction, or Petrach's metre, not this X of Y business, in English we have the possessive and can say Y's X.
• "In the shift between the first version and the final version" -> "Between the first and final versions".
• "More Miltonic and less Horatian" -> "More like Milton and less like Horace". Housman wrote "Malt does more than Milton can to justify God's ways to Man"; he did not write that malt was more Miltonic than the Theistic. This is pure sophistry.

I've fixed most of these, but someone else still needs to sort out that in "focusing on the poet's own death" (i.e. not the narrator's), we're in two minds on whether the poet and narrator are the same person. Si Trew (talk) 19:53, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Poem

• OK, I am a bit concerned that the poem is quoted almost in its entirety, but I can't find any particular reason to fault it. I'd prefer if the interspersed commentary was not all ascribed to one reference (Mack, 2000).

Themes

• Opening para, by now we know it is "Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard", this need not be repeated.
• "the death of the poet" -> "the narrator's death". You have to take care here, because in the lead and onwards you mention the narrator, and (I presume though it is never quite made clear) distinguish the narrator of the poem from Gray himself; here you combine the two.
• Swift's version, I would suggest "satirical" rather than "comedic".
• "Graveyard School", link to Graveyard poets if that is what you mean. (earlier)
• "contains a duller emphasis" -> "has less emphasis". Before reading the next sentence I thought what it meant was that it was more morose or pessimistic.
• Link euphemism.
• New para at "There is a difference in tone..."
• Which two versions of the elegy? We've established there were several. The first and last? The two published versions (the one with errors, the one without)?
• I'm a bit at odds with this word "obscure" that also occurs in the lead. I am not sure that being rustic or common necessarily means one is obscure, and think this word should be cut. If the common or rustic man is mentioned, at least on a headstone, he can't have been that obscure. Can't they just stand on their own without qualification?
  • Taking reductio ad absurdem here, and the that the poetry immortalises them (as said later), they may be lost in name (which they are not if they have headstones) or in thought (which they are not if they have this elegy to them), so by RAD they are not obscure. The word I think is wrong, only that, they are just normal people but "obscure" has a somewhat odd twinge, maybe only in its modern use, and an air of high-falutin' about it, "the little man from the village". I am not going to say about oh it means Latin for round the corner, just that I find it the wrong word to use, and mention it only because it is important.
• "The first version of the elegy", new para.
• "The later version of the poem kept the stoic resignation regarding death, as he is still accepting death". Who? Gray? The narrator?
• "The epitaph's conclusion also serves as an appropriate way to conclude the poem based on the philosophy within the poem as the indirect and reticent manner matches Gray's avoidance of spontaneity within the poem". And breathe. This sentence needs completely rewriting. Suggest as a first stab "The end of the epitaph is also the end of the poem, and serves to illustrate Gray's [the narrator's?] sideways stance and hesitance".
• "faith that there is a hope". I don't think the faith is that there is a hope. Faith and hope mean the same thing here, I think, or at least, there is a hope or faith in something invisible, but the faith is not in the hope.
• Locke, link to "philosophy of the sensations" to John Locke#The self.
• "To aid in the contemplation found in the later part of the poem" -> "To aid his contemplation, found later in the poem" (or drop "found" completely). Who is doing the finding, the narrator or the reader?
• "The ending of the poem" -> "The end of"
• "Additionally," cut
• "It emphasises death affecting everyone". Well it is rather inevitable. I think what it means here is it affects survivors.
• Link Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
• "ending of the poem is connected.... in that the beginning of the poem dealt ... and the ending describes... ", slip into past tense. "Deals".
• "but still questions the matter anyway", I think "still" and "anyway" are synonyms here, one should go (I say "anyway" goes).
• "When it comes to the difference" -> "Of the difference". Might lose "dead" after "renowned" (they're all dead so it doesn't need saying).
• "democratic" here may not be quite right in any sense of the word really. How about "Death is not the perfect leveller"? Or is that worse?
• "lie persons" -> "lie those" or "lie people".
• "untoward circumstance", cut "untoward". (POV: it's OK in the quotes but this does suggest vaguely to me the opinion of the article's writer)
• "The poem ends with the narrator" new para.
• "Like many of Gray's poems, the poem". it. it. it. Pronouns need not become an endangered species. If you tell me oh well there is no antecedent for "it", which strictly is true, then write "The poem, like many of Gray's, ..."
• "The ramifications of the comparison between the obscure and renowed is...." Do you think this compound noun is perhaps a wee bit too long? At least it should read "ramifications ... are"; but that the writer has forgotten how many ramifications we have is a clear sign that the noun is too long anyway. Finally we then get to "there are political ramifications" and have to remember the "Although". The whole sentence is upside down and probably needs splitting into two or three.
• The sentence starting "The setting, Stoke Poges", rather gets stuck in a tar pit of parenthetical commas. "Both John Milton and John Hampden spent time near the setting of Stoke Poges, which was also affected by the English Civil War". I note in passing John Milton is given his forename here but only his surname earlier. I suggest cutting "John" here for both people (and link Hampden).
• "The poem's composition could also have been prompted" – surely this belongs in section "Composition"? Which then requires a bit of juggling there: having decided there were only two balls, there are now three or four, introduced by this one later sentence (and referenced).
• Jacobite needs a link, ideally to the trial itself. (Battle of Culloden was in 1746, is this the "trial" referred to?)
• "that the messages are too universalised to require" -> "the poem's message is too universal to need", and later, "poem's composition" -> "its composition".
• "support the working poor but look down on the poor that refused to work" -> "the poor who worked, but look down on those that refused to".
• "rebellions or struggles by the poor in English history" -> "the poor's past rebellions and struggles"
• "The poem ignores... manner": the political aspects here are dangling. These political aspects? But the whole sentence is a bit turgid.
• "allows for Gray to discuss" -> "allows Gray to discuss" "Lets Gray discuss"
• "Gray" and "the narrator" are again confused in this paragraph.
• "Arguing that poetry is capable of preserving those who have died". I don't know if this is relevant but of course Shakespeare's sonnet "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day" (VIII if I remember correctly) also does exactly that in its last two lines; I only mention it not to cry "thief!" but that it comes from a long tradition.
• "The argument between living.... those who have died" is an awfully long sentence.
• "It is probable that Gray", POV or references needed.
• "compared to the guilty Cromwell". POV, I realise in the poem itself this is all right, but not as outside it, in my view. so either the "guilty" (or "guilty Cromwell") should be quoted or removed. Stet, it is clearly in apposition to another reading of him being guiltless.
• At "The poem's primary message" new para. Primary should mean "first" not "main", but it doesn't any more, the shock.
• John Hampden again gets his first name in the last sentence, whereas Milton and Cromwell do not. I can accept that Hampden may need qualifying i.e. not because there were other Miltons and Cromwells but because he is not as well known (people assume Milton is John Milton, Cromwell is Oliver Cromwell), but within this article his name should be used consistently, and hwre we have Cromwell and Hampden and Milton all sometimes used with their first names and sometimes not. Any particular way is acceptable, and at first use I have no problem to use their full names then

surnames after, but it is a bit more random than that in the article as it stands.

• (Just a vague observation of discomfort here, that doesn't really belong in a copy edit) The last couple of paras of this section are really rather more heavy than they need to be, in my subjective opinion. No particular gripe against the content, but it sometimes seems to make heavy weather of it.

I've done many of these (ticked) but the larger ones need looking at by someone more knowledgeable. Si Trew (talk) 20:10, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

In response to "the death of the poet" -> "the narrator's death", there is a poet in the poem that is not Gray. ^OohBunnies!Not just any bunnies... 00:30, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Other notes:

• The source uses "obscure": "Having first considered the possible advantages and disadvantages of a life of country obscurity... from the vantage of what we, as humans, leave behind us in the shape of testaments and memorials, Gray's elegist broaches hte larger and potentially more troublesome issue of nature's profligacy" - Mack 2001 p. 405. Obscure in this sense means unknown, I believe.
• "The poem's composition could also have been prompted" - The Composition section is about the writing of drafts and other aspects of the publication. That line is about the possible political aspect of the poem and how it coincided with a political event.
• Linked Jacobite as there is no page on the trial.
• ""Gray" and "the narrator" are again confused in this paragraph." I don't believe it does confuse the two. Gray is used as the poem affecting real life and the narrator is used as part of the poem's internal aspects.
• "At "The poem's primary message" new para." I unsplit it. Splitting the paragraphs seperates sentences from their citations.

I've attempted to sort the rest. ^OohBunnies!Not just any bunnies... 02:13, 13 July 2010 (UTC)

Influence

• I look at the first sentence of the opening para here and it is just the sunshine coming out after the heavy weather of the stuff before. It says what it says so cleanly, so concisely, and there is just nothing to fault it. My hackles raised at the "English" in quotes, but they are needed, and the sentence is short enough not to need to explain them.
• "to emend" I think is may be wrong ("amend"?): my Collins defines it as "to make corrections or improvements in a text by critical editing". It may be meant, but is, unfortunately I think it is one of those words that will be thought of as wrong even if it is right, so suggest avoiding it. I will not be the only one to think so.
• "Alfred Tennyson" I suggest "Alfred, Lord Tennyson"; though I know both are correct and Wikipedia doesn't stand on honorific titles, it is the name he is more known by, and the title of his WP article.

• '"kneel" and "toll"' I think needs explaining, and would it be just one phrase "kneel and toll"? My Brewer's doesn't give it, though presumably it means to kneel in prayer and pay repentance. M Wikipedia search gave nothing useful.
• Link Wessex Poems and Other Verses.
• "It is posible that parts of T. S. Eliot's"... new para. I'm not splitting paras just arbitrarily for length here, but Eliot is a long way poetically from Hardy.
• the yew tree, is it worth mentioning this is traditionally associated with churchyards? Probably not.

• I think these points have been dealt with now. I'm pretty certain that "kneel" was a typo; should have been "knell". Malleus Fatuorum 13:51, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I should have realised that myself. Sorry about that. Si Trew (talk) 15:14, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

OK that's looking good. Si Trew (talk) 15:18, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Critical response

• The quotation from Gray's letter of 18 December 1750: there is a discussion currently at Wikipedia_talk:MOS#Long_s_in_quotations_from_primary_sources, suggesting consensus that Wikipedia favours changing punctuation even within quotations to a more modern style. So the ampersand "&" (apparently archaic nowadays in some eyes) would be changed to " nd", and the capitals on nouns (except of course proper nouns) might also go. I think that is rather a folly, and there are counterarguments to leave them as they stand, but I merely note it for consideration. (Of course there are no long S's in these quotes, it is the discussion after that says about more general points.)
• "From its publication" -> "From the time that it was published". It wasn't its publication that gained the praise, but the poem itself.
• "for its universal aspects". An aspect necessarily takes in a view from one angle, and so cannot be universal.
• "and G. became one of the most famous 18th century poets during his life". Slip here lose the hyphen between 18th and century. But if he lived in the 18th century it is really rather redundant to say he was one of the most famous of that century and not, say, of the 21st. So cut "18th century" entirely, and probably for "poets during his life" write "living poets". Similarly 20th century does not need the hyphen but a non-breaking space, see WP:HYPHEN:

Values and units used as compound adjectives are hyphenated only where the unit is given as a whole word. Where hyphens are not used, values and units are always separated by a non-breaking space (&amp;&nbsp;).

• "In Canadian historic tradition". The tradition itself s not historic. "In Canadian history". Plains of Abraham could be linked.
• "He supposedly said" is that WP:WEASEL? Not sure as the reference says "quoted" (well "qtd") in the work, but we should lose "supposedly" if we can, if it is RS and no doubt V then unless the reference also says supposedly we should lose it.
• "sufficiently apparently" (in a quote). Allowing for the variation in English since that time, this still strikes me as a typo. I would also like Johnson's quote "and with these sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo", later grammarians would insist on "from which every bosom", so is this correct? I imagine it is, but can we check? Johnson was rather the grammarian so I imagine if he wrote it he meant it, but can we double check please?

Later response

• The italics in Young's quote, can we make clear whose emphasis it is? In printing of that time, italics were not particularly used for emphasis, so that it may be we should make them magiscule.
• "anthropomorphised" -> "personified".
• "Beyond John Young" -> "As well as".
• "Robert Potter's 1783 is a general"... his 1783 what?
• "made by Johnson in the notes of the text". Who was making the notes? Johnson or Wakefield?
  • OK I see the next sentence "In 1785 G. Wakefield produced" and this needs to be combined with its previous; it is putting the cart before the horse.
• "Following in 1791 was James Boswell's" -> "James Boswell followed in 1791 with" and link James Boswell or Life of Samuel Johnson or both.
• "Of Lamar tine" is that a typo for "time"? It still doesn't make much sense to me even then. Lammas time?

20th-century response

• Opening sentence "Critics at the beginning of the 20th century believed that its use of sound and tone made the poem great", "it" here attaches to "the beginning of the 20th century". Write "At the beginning of the 20th century, critics believed the poem's use of sound and tone made it great".
• Empson 'claiming that the poem "means, as the context makes clear...' "that" -> "what"
• "Metaphysical poetry", link and drop cap.
• "Later in 1947," -> "Later, in 1947," (or just "In 1947").
• "The prevailing view ... was to view". Too many "view"s, for second read "was that"
• "was to view the poem as a powerful and". As a powerful what? Cut "a", probably
• psychological questions within the poem" -> "in the poem"

• I think all these issues have been addressed. Malleus Fatuorum 14:09, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

yes, that's looking good. Si Trew (talk) 15:26, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Harvnb and all that

Taking WP:BOLD, I am going through and converting the existing references to use {{Harvnb}} and {{Sfn}}. This will not change the references at all as seen, except to link them in the references to the bibliography.

In doing so I spot Anonymous, 1896. This fails WP:V.

Si Trew (talk) 18:41, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't, it's in the references, I missed it. Fixed. Si Trew (talk) 20:35, 12 July 2010 (UTC)

Ambrose Bierce on the Elegy

Noted satirist Ambrose Bierce parodied the initial lines of the Elegy in his famous Devil's Dictionary (ref: http://thedevilsdictionary.com/?E, under ELEGY):

The cur foretells the knell of parting day;
The loafing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
The wise man homeward plods; I only stay
To fiddle-faddle in a minor key.

I think this parody is notable enough to be included in the article, but I am unsure as to where. Critical response? Influence?--Gorpik (talk) 11:11, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Tend to agree. Published in 1906, so 20th response section might seem most appropriate place? Martinevans123 (talk) 16:40, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Bierce's childish cynicism is hardly notable, especially in view of the fact that there have been 2000 parodies of the Elegy. How does it advance our knowledge of Gray's work and its interpretation and in what way does it warrant mention over 1999 other candidates? Mzilikazi1939 (talk) 19:03, 1 May 2015 (UTC)

Wordsworth

The sentence on Wordsworth under the section on the poem's influence makes no sense. Lyrical Ballads was published in 1798/1802, Intimations in1807. It may be that Gray's poem influenced both, but the article seems to suggest that Intimations is in Lyrical Ballads. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.131.231.56 (talk) 07:28, 29 April 2012 (UTC)

Lines 73-80

While I understand that the poem cannot/should not be reproduced here in its entirety, is there any reason that lines 73-80 -- the two best-known verses, beginning with "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife" -- are omitted here? In the "influences" section, it is noted that Thomas Hardy's fourth novel is named "Far from the Madding Crowd", and in "critical response", the fact that Wordsworth singled out lines 77-80 for special praise is mentioned. The lines themselves, however, are not included. Would anyone object if I were to add them? DoctorJoeE ^{review transgressions}/_{talk to me!} 15:47, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Very good point. Fully support inclusion. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:37, 3 June 2014 (UTC)

Revisions 2015

While I appreciate all the hard work that went into the rewriting in order to meet the good article standard, many parts read like a string of references sewn together on the slenderest of commentaries. In some cases there is no explanation of why certain conclusions were reached by the authors cited, which make the article obscure and unhelpful in those places. In some cases, also, the editor has plainly mistaken what his source was saying, as in the passage that asserted that Gray followed Petrarchan metrics. Since Petrarch wrote in Italian and Italian versification differs widely from English, this is plainly impossible. Some other assertions of influence are similarly questionable without further explanation. I have accordingly edited out such instances. They diminished the article's effectiveness and quality. Mzilikazi1939 (talk) 12:53, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

In going through the sections on the critical response, it was clear that several passages were off-topic, in that they dealt with criticism of the rest of Gray's poetry, rather than the idividual work which is the present article's subject. This was particularly so when dealing with Dr Johnson and Wordsworth, who deplored Gray's artificiality in general but exempted the Elegy. That needed repeating only once, rather than over and over. In almost every reference to Wordsworth the distinction was not made and such passages have therefore been deleted. Earlier claims that certain works of his were indebted to the Elegy were not substantiated by facts, only by assertions, and were therefore unacceptable in an encyclopaedic article.

In addition, various sentences in the final sections more properly belonged elsewhere in the expanded article and have been transferred. Mzilikazi1939 (talk) 11:07, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Putting in another Wikisource Template

I've put another Wikisource template nearer to the Poem section. I'm a new Wikipedian and while editing I marked it as a minor edit, but re-reading the minor edit guidelines, it looks like that sort of thing is verboten.

I think that a more highly-visible link to the original text of the work on Wikisource, either at the top of the article or near the commentary on the poem, would be a good thing. I've added the Wikisource template to the top of the Poem section, but it may have stolen the limelight from an image directly beneath it, so further edits might be good. Nokkromancer (talk) 05:24, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Morality and death

"...the poem's discussion of morality and death..."  : was "mortality" intended here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Backep1 (talk • contribs) 11:08, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Backep1 Somebody would need to check the original source, but as its title refers to "A Poem of Moral Choice and Resolution" I would guess that "morality" is correct. MichaelMaggs (talk) 22:58, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I see your point now. I ought to pay more attention to the moral of the poem. Backep1 (talk) 07:01, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Omission

Have we left out the most powerful stanza? Namely:

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,

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

Awaits alike th' inevitable hour.

The paths of glory lead but to the grave.

174.56.173.38 (talk) 03:50, 1 October 2023 (UTC)kolef174.56.173.38 (talk) 03:50, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

No, "we" have not; the final line is referred to further on in the article. Sweetpool50 (talk) 10:43, 1 October 2023 (UTC)

Ah, but "we" left out the preceding three lines which are so beautiful and powerful. 174.56.173.38 (talk) 20:16, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

The French translation of two more lines from that stanza are discussed later. To my mind, the "Poem" section is overloaded with quotation already. If it hadn't been that the earlier version had been given Good Article status, I would have thinned them down or made sure that most only appeared where there was room to discuss their function within the poem as a whole. 'Power' and 'Beauty' are subjective conceptions and would need WP:RS. Sweetpool50 (talk) 22:03, 9 October 2023 (UTC)

All that power and beauty lead but to the grave, no? 174.56.173.38 (talk) 19:18, 17 October 2023 (UTC)kolef174.56.173.38 (talk) 19:18, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Please read WP:OR and WP:NPOV. Wikipedia is not the place for personal essays and opinions. We just collect what other people have said, using sources regarded as reliable and valid. Gorpik (talk) 09:51, 18 October 2023 (UTC)

That misses the point. It would not be difficult to find citations to third parties in support of my suggestion, and those should be included in the main article. 174.56.173.38 (talk) 00:04, 5 November 2023 (UTC)kolef174.56.173.38 (talk) 00:04, 5 November 2023 (UTC)