Henry Kirke White Edward Young David Mallet William Mason James Beattie James Thomson is also sometimes included as a Graveyard Poet. Criticism Many critics of Graveyard poetry had very little positive feedback for the poets and their work. Critic Amy Louise Reed called Graveyard poetry a disease, while other critics called many poems unoriginal, and said that the poets were better than their poetry. Although the majority of criticism about Graveyard poetry is negative, other critics thought differently, especially about poet Edward Young. Critic Isabell St. John Bliss also celebrates Edward Young’s ability to write his poetry in the style of the Graveyard School and at the same time include Christian themes, and Cecil V. Wicker called Young a forerunner in the Romantic movement and described his work as original. Eric Parisot claimed that fear is created as a spur to faith and that in Graveyard poetry, "...it is only when we restore religion — to examine the various ways graveyard poetry exploited fear and melancholy — that we can fully grasp its enduring contribution to the Gothic..." Poem samples The earliest poem attributed to the Graveyard School was Thomas Parnell's A Night-Piece on Death (1721), in which King Death himself gives an address from his kingdom of bones: "When men my scythe and darts supply How great a King of Fears am I!" (61–62) Characteristic later poems include Edward Young's Night-Thoughts (1742), in which a lonely traveller in a graveyard reflects lugubriously on: The vale funereal, the sad cypress gloom; The land of apparitions, empty shades! (117–18) Blair's The Grave (1743) proves to be no more cheerful as it relates with grim relish how: Wild shrieks have issued from the hollow tombs; Dead men have come again, and walked about; And the great bell has tolled, unrung and untouched. (51–53) However, a more contemplative mood is achieved in the celebrated opening verse of Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751): The curfew tolls the knell of parting day. The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea, The ploughman homeward plods his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me. (1–4) See also Romantic literature in English References Noyes, Russell (Ed.) (1956). English Romantic Poetry and Prose. New York: Oxford University Press. Poetry movements 18th century in England English male poets British poetry 18th-century British literature British literary movements