Ode to a Nightingale the words that dominate the poem. There is also an emphasis on words beginning with consonants, especially those that begin with "b", "p" or "v". These three consonants are relied on heavily in the first stanza, and they are used syzygically to add a musical tone within the poem. In terms of poetic meter, Keats relies on spondee throughout his 1819 odes and in just over 8% of his lines within "Ode to a Nightingale", including line 12: and line 25: To Walter Jackson Bate, the use of spondees in lines 31–34 creates a feeling of slow flight, and "in
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard importantly, that in its essentials Gray's "Elegy" touches this tradition at many points, and consideration of them is of interest to both to appreciation of the poem and to seeing how [...] they become in the later tradition essential points of reference." Also in 1977, Thomas Carper noted, "While Gray was a schoolboy at Eton, his poetry began to show a concern with parental relationships, and with his position among the great and lowly in the world [...] But in the "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" these longstanding and very human concerns have their most affecting expression." In 1978,