What is the pastoral elegy of the poem 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'?

Ans. The pastoral elegy is a poem about both death and idyllic rural life. Often, the 'elegy takes the pastoral elements and relates them to express poet's grief. The pastoral elegy is incredibly moving and in its most classic form it concerns itself with simplc, country figures. 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' is an eiegy in name but not in form. The essential characteristics of the clegy, which are invoking the Muse, expressing the shepherd's (or poet's) grief, praising the dead, inveighing against-death, telling the affects of death on a personified nature, accepting death and acknowledging the hope of immortality, are missing or modified in Thomas Gray's elegy.
The 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard' is all about the common people. It came from the master mind of Thomas Gray. He neutralised the fact of being rich or poor. The gravity of aristocracy or blue blood is not any achievement. It is just by luck.Aristocracy gives economic freedom and economy helps to overcome the struggles. That's why they can go beyond the distance. He says the rich should not treat the poor roughly. People have nothing to pride for. Death will make all level. In his poem Death the Leveller', James Shirley says,
"Only the actions of the just. Smell sweet and blossom in their dust."
There goes a proyerb, "Equal competition demands equal opportunities. The opportunity between the rich and the poor is not same. So, they can't be judged equally. They are the inhabitants of different pole. Gray believed if the poor people of Hamlet got equal opportunities, they could become leaders, scientist, or poets. Opportunities create scopes of
freedoin which is very much essential to do something creative. That's why, American Authoress Maya Angelou said in her poem 'Equality',
"Equality, and I will be free.
Equality, and I will be free."
For all these reasons, Cray frowned not to hate the poor. The rich should not unierestimate them. They should not mock the poor. It would be a great mistake to do so. The poor might not be popular but industrious. Simplicity is their only wealth. That's why the poet says,
"Let not Ambition mock their useful toil,
Their homely joys, and destiny obsqure;
Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile
The short and simple annals of the Poor."

All are equal. This is the higher message of humanity. Nothing is greater than iț. So, the rich should not underestimate the poor. And on the other hand, the. poor should not hate them for being rich.Thus, it will be a worthy place to live in.