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
Portrait of a Lady (poem) speaker takes his farewell from the Lady before going abroad; she wonders why they have not become friends, asks him to write to her and describes her melancholy, solitary fate; in the close the speaker thinks of the Lady possibly dying and questions his behavior towards her. Like many of Eliot's early poems, "Portrait of a Lady" shows heavy influence from Jules Laforgue. For example, in 'Another Complaint of my Lord Pierrot', Laforgue has the lines: While Eliot has the lines: Portrait of a Lady (poem) "Portrait of a Lady" is a poem by American-British poet T. S. Eliot (1888–1965),