Discuss the major themes that are correlated by Thomas Gray in "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard."

An
important theme of Gray's " Written in a Country Courtyard" is that
death is the great leveler. Gray uses this idea to exhort the
wealthy and powerful not to look down upon the simple lives of the poor peasants buried in the
country cemetery, because death equalizes everyone. In the end, death takes us all, no matter
how powerful. The poet finds solace in the "noiseless tenor of their [the simple people's]
way," which never led them into "Luxury and Pride."

Gray's
elegy also expresses the theme that people have equality of gifts,
if not of opportunities. As he writes, many a "mute inglorious Milton" lies buried in
an obscure grave, unknown, because life never offered him the opportunity to develop his gifts.
Gray depicts this lack of opportunity as a gain as well as a loss: fortunately for them, none of
these people had the opportunity to exercise the kind of power that leads to bloodshed and to
"shut[ting] the gates of mercy."

Finally, Gray depicts
obscurity as a natural state as...