on the natural process of wastage and unfulfilled potential. The speaker focuses on the inequities that come from death, obscuring individuals, while he begins to resign himself to his own inevitable fate. As the poem ends, the speaker begins to deal with death in a direct manner as he discusses how humans desire to be remembered. As the speaker does so, the poem shifts and the first speaker is replaced by a second who describes the death of the first: The poem concludes with a description of the poet's grave, over which the speaker is meditating, together with a description of the end of the poet's life: An epitaph is included after the conclusion of the poem. The epitaph reveals that the poet whose grave is the focus of the poem was unknown and obscure. Circumstance kept the poet from becoming something greater, and he was separated from others because he was unable to join in the common affairs of their life: The original conclusion from the earlier version of the poem confronts the reader with the inevitable prospect of death and advises resignation, which differs from the indirect, third-person description in the final version: Themes The poem connects with many earlier British poems that contemplate death and seek to make it more familiar and tame, including Jonathan Swift's satirical Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift. But when compared to other works by the so-called Graveyard poets, such as Blair's The Grave (1743), Gray's poem has less emphasis on common images found there. His description of the moon, birds and trees dispels the horror found in them, and he largely avoids mentioning the word "grave", instead using euphemisms. There is a difference in tone between the two versions of the elegy; the early one ends with an emphasis on the narrator joining with the obscure common man, while the later version ends with an emphasis on how it is natural for humans to want to be known. The later ending also explores the narrator's own death, whereas the earlier version serves as a Christian consolation regarding death. The first version of the elegy is among the few early poems composed by Gray in English, including "Sonnet on the Death of Richard West", his "Eton Ode", and his "Ode to Adversity". All four contain Gray's meditations on mortality that were inspired by West's death. The later version of the poem