SOURCE: Hutchings, W. “Syntax of Death: Instability in Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” Studies in Philology 81, no. 4 (1984): 496-514.

In the following essay, Hutchings attempts to demonstrate that the ambiguous syntax used by Gray when referring to death creates much uncertainty for the reader.

The curfew tolls! the knell of parting day! 

Joseph Warton's startling emendation of one of the most famous opening lines in English poetry looks like the work of a rather too eager enthusiast.¹ He may, however, have simply wanted to tidy up what Gray had left oddly unclear. He has removed the transitive function of “tolls” and established “the knell of parting day” as the same as the “curfew” by putting the phrases in apposition to each other. As Gray wrote the line, the object was, in effect, much the same as the subject: “knell” acts as a cognate object, repeating the meaning...