Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard 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. Gray's meditations during spring 1750 turned to how individuals' reputations would survive. Eventually, Gray remembered some lines of poetry that he composed in 1742 following the death of West, a poet he knew. Using that previous material, he began to compose a poem that would serve as an answer to the various questions he was pondering. On 3 June 1750, Gray moved to Stoke Poges, and on 12 June he completed "Elegy Written
A Prayer for My Daughter work of Modernist poetry. The poem begins by describing "storm" which is a "howling", and his newborn daughter, sleeping "half hid" in her cradle, and protected somewhat from the storm. The storm, which can in part be read as symbolizing the Irish War of Independence, overshadows the birth of Yeats' daughter and creates the political frame that sets the text into historical context. In stanza two, the setting for the poem is revealed as being "the tower", a setting for many of Yeats's poems, including the book of poems entitled "The Tower" (1928). This is Thoor Ballylee, an ancient Norman