•The "Graveyard
Poets", also termed "Churchyard Poets", were a number of
pre-Romantic English poets of the 18th century #characterised by their #gloomy_meditations on #mortality, "skulls and coffins,
epitaphs and worms" elicited by the presence of the #graveyard.
•"Graveyard" poetry increasingly expressed a feeling for the "sublime" and uncanny, and an antiquarian interest in ancient English poetic forms and folk poetry.
•The "graveyard poets" are often recognized as #precursors of the #Gothic_literary_genre, as well as the #Romantic_movement.
•At its narrowest, the term "Graveyard School" refers to four poems: Thomas Gray's #Elegy_Written_in_a_Country_Churchyard, Thomas Parnell's "Night-Piece On #Death", Robert Blair's #The_Grave , and Edward Young's #Night-Thoughts
•The term itself was not used as a brand for the poets and their poetry until #William_Macneile_Dixon did so in 1898.
•The earliest poem attributed to the Graveyard School was #Thomas_Parnell's #A_Night-Piece on Death (1721), in which King Death himself gives an address from his kingdom of bones:
"When men my scythe and darts supply
How great a King of Fears am I!"
•Characteristic later poems include #Edward_Young's Night-Thoughts (1742), in which a lonely traveller in a graveyard reflects lugubriously on:
The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom;
The land of apparitions, empty shades!
•Blair's #The_Grave (1743) proves to be no more cheerful as it relates with grim relish how:
Wild shrieks have issued from the hollow tombs;
Dead men have come again, and walked about;
And the great bell has tolled, unrung and untouched.
•However, a more contemplative mood is achieved in the celebrated opening verse of Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751)
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
•"Graveyard" poetry increasingly expressed a feeling for the "sublime" and uncanny, and an antiquarian interest in ancient English poetic forms and folk poetry.
•The "graveyard poets" are often recognized as #precursors of the #Gothic_literary_genre, as well as the #Romantic_movement.
•At its narrowest, the term "Graveyard School" refers to four poems: Thomas Gray's #Elegy_Written_in_a_Country_Churchyard, Thomas Parnell's "Night-Piece On #Death", Robert Blair's #The_Grave , and Edward Young's #Night-Thoughts
•The term itself was not used as a brand for the poets and their poetry until #William_Macneile_Dixon did so in 1898.
•The earliest poem attributed to the Graveyard School was #Thomas_Parnell's #A_Night-Piece on Death (1721), in which King Death himself gives an address from his kingdom of bones:
"When men my scythe and darts supply
How great a King of Fears am I!"
•Characteristic later poems include #Edward_Young's Night-Thoughts (1742), in which a lonely traveller in a graveyard reflects lugubriously on:
The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom;
The land of apparitions, empty shades!
•Blair's #The_Grave (1743) proves to be no more cheerful as it relates with grim relish how:
Wild shrieks have issued from the hollow tombs;
Dead men have come again, and walked about;
And the great bell has tolled, unrung and untouched.
•However, a more contemplative mood is achieved in the celebrated opening verse of Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751)
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
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