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
To a Skylark as such." The poem consists of twenty-one stanzas made up of five lines each. The first four lines are metered in trochaic trimeter, the fifth in iambic hexameter, also called Alexandrine. The rhyme scheme of each stanza is ABABB. The poem begins with a description of the skylark high above in the sky. The bird is characterized as a “Spirit”. Its song is described as “unpremeditated art”. The skylark is able to sing while it ascends overhead. Its flight is compared to a “cloud of fire”. It soars across the descending sun like an “unbodied joy”. It flies in the