Question

What does the poet mean in the following lines from “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard”? Their lot forbade: nor circumscribed alone Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined a. The villagers’ simple lives helped them avoid evil. b. The villagers’ vices were the cause of their hard lives. c. The villagers’ lives prevented them from being good. d. The villagers’ faults were hidden by their deaths.

Answer 1

The answer is: a. The villagers’ simple lives helped them avoid evil.

In the lines from “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” the author Thomas Gray refers to the poverty of the villagers buried in the churchyard. He suggests the isolation in the country has given people restricted literacy but has also made them less bound to perform unlawful acts.