 The performance is connected with the several odes that Gray also wrote and those of Joseph Warton and William Collins . The poem , as it developed from its original form , advanced from the Horatian manner and became more Miltonic . The poem actively relied on " English " techniques and language . The stanza form , quatrains with an ABAB rhyme scheme , was common to English poetry and used throughout the 16th century . Any foreign diction that Gray relied on was merged with English words and phrases to give them an " English " feel . Many of the foreign words Gray adapted were previously used by Shakespeare or Milton , securing an " English " tone , and he emphasised monosyllabic words throughout his elegy to add a rustic English tone . 
