 Critics during the 1950s and 1960s generally regarded the Elegy as powerful , and emphasised its place as one of the great English poems . In 1955 , R. W. Ketton @-@ Cremer argued , " At the close of his greatest poem Gray was led to describe , simply and movingly , what sort of man he believed himself to be , how he had fared in his passage through the world , and what he hoped for from eternity . " Regarding the status of the poem , Graham Hough in 1953 explained , " no one has ever doubted , but many have been hard put to it to explain in what its greatness consists . It is easy to point out that its thought is commonplace , that its diction and imagery are correct , noble but unoriginal , and to wonder where the immediately recognizable greatness has slipped in . " Following in 1963 , Martin Day argued that the poem was " perhaps the most frequently quoted short poem in English . " Frank Brady , in 1965 , declared , " Few English poems have been so universally admired as Gray 's Elegy , and few interpreted in such widely divergent ways . " Patricia Spacks , in 1967 , focused on the psychological questions in the poem and claimed that " For these implicit questions the final epitaph provides no adequate answer ; perhaps this is one reason why it seems not entirely a satisfactory conclusion to the poem . " She continued by praising the poem : " Gray 's power as a poet derives largely from his ability to convey the inevitability and <unk> of conflict , conflict by its nature unresolvable . " In 1968 , Herbert Starr pointed out that the poem was " frequently referred to , with some truth , as the best known poem in the English language . " 
