John Gray (poet) French, German, Latin, music and art. In 1882 he passed the Civil Service exams and, five years later, the University of London matriculation exams. He joined the Foreign Office where he became a librarian. Gray is best known today as an aesthetic poet of the 1890s and as a friend of Ernest Dowson, Aubrey Beardsley and Oscar Wilde. He was also a talented translator, bringing works by the French Symbolists Stéphane Mallarmé, Paul Verlaine, Jules Laforgue and Arthur Rimbaud into English, often for the first time. He is purported to be the inspiration behind the title character in Wilde's "The
David Gray (poet) In a proud sorrow! There is life with God, In other kingdom of a sweeter air: In Eden every flower is blown: Amen. 27 September 1861. David Gray (poet) David Gray (29 January 18383 December 1861) was a Scottish poet, from Merkland, Kirkintilloch. He died in his hometown aged 23. His friend and fellow poet Robert Buchanan wrote his biography in 1900. The son of a handloom weaver, Gray was born at Merkland, by Kirkintilloch, Dunbartonshire. His parents resolved to educate him for the Free Kirk, and through their self-denial and his own exertions as a pupil teacher and private