Final answer:
Thomas Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' is a reflection on the lives and potential of ordinary people who have passed away, contrasted with societal limitations and expressed through the symbolic use of the urn.
Step-by-step explanation:
The poem 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' by Thomas Gray is best summarized as a reflection on the lives of ordinary people buried in a churchyard.
This elegy delves into themes of mortality, the inevitability of death, and the universal truth that the rich and poor alike return to the earth. It contrasts the simple lives of the villagers with the potential they may have had, and laments the obscurity into which they have fallen. The poem is not just a mourning of their death but a contemplation on the societal limitations that prevented their talents from being recognized.
Elegies like those by Gray and other poets such as John Donne, use symbolic imagery like the urn to convey poetic meaning, representing the idea that the poem itself is a vessel containing the essence of the person or idea being lamented.