ABSTRACT
The changing artistic relationship between the graveyard poet and the dead is central to the poetic mode’s experimental development and its subsequent contribution to mid-century poetics. Each shift bears significant results in poetic methodology, objective and, ultimately, artistic success. In Night Thoughts, as we saw in the previous chapter, Young’s resolve against the temptation to seek commune with the dead he mourns becomes a defining moment of the poem, shaping the very nature of his conversion experience and the didactic ambitions of his text; his Thoughts are the direct consequence of his decision to ultimately distance himself from the deceased. Gray, however, pursues what Young chooses not to. Not only does he willingly seek an intimate knowledge of death in his Elegy, he seeks it by imagining the very experience.
