 By the 1980s , critics emphasised the power of the poem 's message and technique , and it was seen as an important English poem . After analyzing the language of the poem , W. Hutchings declared in 1984 , " The epitaph , then , is still making us think , still disturbing us , even as it uses the language of conventional Christianity and conventional epitaphs . Gray does not want to round his poem off neatly , because death is an experience of which we cannot be certain , but also because the logic of his syntax demands continuity rather than completion . " Also in 1984 , Anne Williams claimed , " ever since publication it has been both popular and universally admired . Few readers then or now would dispute Dr. Johnson 's appraisal ... In the twentieth century we have remained eager to praise , yet praise has proved difficult ; although tradition and general human experience affirm that the poem is a masterpiece , and although one could hardly wish a single word changed , it seems surprisingly resistant to analysis . It is lucid , and at first appears as seamless and smooth as monumental alabaster . " Harold Bloom , in 1987 , claimed , " What moves me most about the superb Elegy is the quality that , following Milton , it shares with so many of the major elegies down to Walt Whitman 's ... Call this quality the pathos of a poetic death @-@ in @-@ life , the fear that one either has lost one 's gift before life has ebbed , or that one may lose life before the poetic gift has expressed itself fully . This strong pathos of Gray 's Elegy achieves a central position as the antithetical tradition that truly mourns primarily a loss of the self . " In 1988 , Morris Golden , after describing Gray as a " poet 's poet " and places him " within the pantheon of those poets with whom familiarity is inescapable for anyone educated in the English language " declared that in " the ' Elegy Written in a Country Church @-@ yard , ' mankind has felt itself to be directly addressed by a very sympathetic , human voice . " He later pointed out : " Gray 's ' Elegy ' was universally admired in his lifetime and has remained continuously the most popular of mid @-@ eighteenth @-@ century English poems ; it is , as Gosse has called it , the standard English poem . The reason for this extraordinary unanimity of praise are as varied as the ways in which poetry can appeal . The ' Elegy ' is a beautiful technical accomplishment , as can be seen even in such details as the variation of the vowel sounds or the poet 's rare discretion in the choice of adjectives and adverbs . Its phrasing is both elegant and memorable , as is evident from the incorporation of much of it into the living language . " 
