He started writing poetry at school and continued to write while he trained with the regiment. Before this inevitability the triumphs of man pass into insignificance, for "The paths of glory," like all paths, "lead but to the grave." The darkness in which the narrator stands is the night of mortality illuminated only by varieties of feeling. [2], Born and educated in England, Grey moved to Canada in adulthood and worked as a professor of English at the University of Ottawa,[3] and later for the National Archives of Canada. Dog Agility Training At It's Finest. The poem might be read as pertinent to Gray's sense of his poetic vocation: his poetic output was small, and his poems were generally short and often unfinished. A Medical Board dismissed his protest as a result of 'neurasthenia' ( what we now call shell-shock), and sent him to Craiglockhart War Hospital. Set at Bletchley Park, Englands top-secret codebreaking center governed by the UKs Official Secrets Act, it first became public in the late 1970s, then opened as a museum in 1994. The "Hymn to Adversity" (1753) and the unfinished "Hymn to Ignorance" (1768) complete the work of the year, which, together with 1741, may comprise Gray's most critical emotional period. The "Ode on the Spring" was written while West was still alive and is to some extent a response to the ode he sent Gray on May 5. A haunting monument to truth. Virtue needs Adversity "to form her [Virtue's] infant mind"; the function of the tutelary spirit here is to engender pity ("she learn'd to melt at others' woe"). He was sent to France in May 1915, where he took part in the Battle of Loos. The plot develops along two alternating timelines. WIKITREE PROTECTS MOST SENSITIVE INFORMATION BUT ONLY TO THE EXTENT STATED IN THE TERMS OF SERVICE AND PRIVACY POLICY. Please contact the Profile Manager or leave information on the bulletin board. Mother of Prince Philip and mother-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II. Queen Victoria's husband. Four years later he left Cambridge without a degree, intending to read law at the Inner Temple in London. Alongside Alexander Pope, Thomas Gray is one of the most important English poets of the 18th century. Rosenberg was born in Bristol to a family of Russian Jewish migrs, who later moved to the East End of London. The network was founded by fictional Lili, drawn from the real Queen of Spies Louise de Bettignies, a regular modern day Joan of Arc.. [9], Land patent 1663,Westmorland County,Virginia for 374 acres.[10]. Although his literary output was slight, he was the dominant poetic figure in the mid-18th century and a precursor of the Romantic movement. November 8, 1947 London. aka: Snakehips. Does anyone want to adopt Francis? woo's the tardy spring: "Helicon's harmonious springs" are associated with generation ("The laughing flowers / Drink life and fragrance as they flow"). DOI link for Gray, Wordsworth, and the Poetry of Ordinary Life. 1647: moved from Maryland to Machadoc, Westmoreland co., Virginia. The first is dominated by what Gray in the preface calls "twelve gigantic figures resembling women" whose purpose is to weave the web of futurity and whose way leads through another field of the dead ("As the paths of fate we tread, / Wading thro' th' ensanguin'd field." The easily identifiable figure of desire in the early verse has been replaced by vast terrifying forms, "Mista black, terrific Maid, / Sangrida, and Hilda," "Gondula, and Geira." Samuel Johnson was the first of many critics to put forward the view that Gray spoke in two languages, one public and the other private, and that the private languagethat of his best-known and most-loved poem, "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (published in 1751 as An Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard)was too seldom heard. Gray turns her story romantic and dangerous. Born in Cornhill on December 26, 1716, Gray was the fifth of 12 children of Philip and Dorothy Antrobus Gray, and the only one to survive infancy. Giles is convicted. Mab, Osla, and Beth each pursue romantic relationships. Robert Graves by Lady Ottoline Morrell, 1920. In July 1759 he moved to London to study at the British Museum, which had been opened to the public in January. The parents listed for this individual are speculative and may not be based on sound genealogical research. He was buried in an olive grove on the island. Oslas prose is Mayfair Slang, from living in Londons swanky Mayfair neighborhood, Knightsbridge. Much of the ode is occupied with the scene of desireMilton's and Shakespeare'sand is thus concerned, however covertly, with the relation between sexual power and poetic vision. Foreign Office official and mediocre poet. Osla dates Prince Philip of Greece. He was eventually transferred to the 11th Battalion, The King's Own Royal Lancaster Regiment and travelled to France. Explore genealogy for Francis Gray Esq. In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal this 7th day of June 1667. See also. The first ternary closes with Aphrodite ("Cytherea's day"), a figure of generative force mingling the union of water and music ("brisk notes in cadence beating"; "arms sublime, that float upon the air"). Intriguingly.., Francis is mentioned along with Cuthbert Fenwick and Robert Ellyson (Ellyson-40), both having surnames associated w/ co. Northumberland, England. Yet the laws of Jove are preserved: the primal scene is never viewed. Grays literary achievementslike those of William Collins, James Macpherson, Thomas Chatterton, William Cowper, Christopher Smart, and Joseph and Thomas Wartonwere overshadowed by the emergence in the 1780s and 1790s of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and the quickly succeeding second generation of Romantic writers. Isaac Rosenberg (1890-1918) Image Issac Rosenberg Estate. A cryptographer at the Bletchley Park British military base. In November 1741 Gray's father died; Gray's extant letters contain no mention of this event. He survived the opening of the Battle of the Somme but was wounded in the leg on 11 July 1916 in the attack on Mametz Wood. A swing band leader and dancer. They represent the combined identities of muse-mother-death, the unified form of desire and authority toward which Gray's imagination has been traveling. Some poets glorified the cause patrioticallytrumpeting the older, traditional notions of duty and honor, while mourning the millions of dead. Desire is converted into the antithetical form of horror. Between oedipal desire (the desire for the "mighty Mother") and the lonely sublime passion of the middle poet there is no adequate middle ground (though Gray hopes to find one). He showed great talent as a composer, despite being troubled by mental illness. British cryptographer and Royal Navy Commander. The wartime girlfriend of Prince Philip. A John Metcalf is also mentioned in the court record. The first starts in 1939 in England. When the poet laureate, Colley Cibber, died in 1757, Gray was offered the position; but he declined it. Henry V : King of England. American children's writer, editor, journalist, screenwriter. The queen of the British Celtic Iceni tribe. Odin wakes her with "runic rhyme; / Thrice pronounc'd, in accents dread." German admiral during the Nazi era who succeeded Adolf Hitler. From 1725-1734 Thomas Gray attended Eton, where he met Richard West and Horace Walpole, son of the powerful Whig minister, Sir Robert Walpole. Sassoon enlisted in the Sussex Yeomanry the day before war was declared. If not, see our friends at Ancestry DNA. Who prowl'd the country far and near, Jimmy : Stevens's fianc. The complexity of these machines and codebreaking is excellently described. Implicit in the scene of desire are the unattainability of the object and the abandonment of the desiring figure to her fate: "Eight times emerging from the flood / She mew'd to ev'ry watery god." One of Francis Gray's friends. British Army officer, Commander of Allied forces. Already characteristic of Gray is the view advocated in the "Ode on the Spring" by a tutelary figure: Beside some water's rushy brink The day before their visit, Giles visits Beth and threatens to have her lobotomized unless she tells him where she hid the Rose Code. As cyberattacks threaten our nations security, The Rose Code and a haunted city remind us of the heroism, endurance, and imagination Quinn masterly shows us is still a possible combination that can change history. Kendall. The 1630 Francis may be the son of the 1610 Francis but not a Francis born in 1620. ?On 26 Nov 1638, Francis Gray applied for a license to marry Alice Moorman, which license was issued (Archives of Maryland, IV, p. 51). Alternatively, search more than 1 million objects from In July 1768 Gray was made professor of modern history at Cambridge, though he never lectured or published on the subject. Still, visualizing may be helpful: There are two kinds of flowers when it comes to women. How indigent the Great! Matthew Arnold, (born December 24, 1822, Laleham, Middlesex, Englanddied April 15, 1888, Liverpool), English Victorian poet and literary and social critic, noted especially for his classical attacks on the contemporary tastes and manners of the "Barbarians" (the aristocracy), the "Philistines" (the commercial middle class), and the "Populace." He became the apostle of "culture . The instruction is absorbed by Virtue (the "rigid lore / With patience many a year she bore"). West's death did inspire the well-known (largely because of Wordsworth's use of it) "Sonnet on the Death of Richard West," yet it is the shortest and least significant work of the year. Such women appeared first as Contemplation or Adversity. There, he suffered an insect bite which became infected and he died of blood poisoning on 23 April. All of Gray's poems are poems of progress, journeys in which the challenge lies in discovering something other than the circularity of ends that are constituted of beginnings ("And they that creep, and they that fly, / Shall end where they began"). British Royal Navy officer. Selima wishes to possess what is taboo; it requires her engagement with a medium in which she cannot survive. +44 (0)7540 787812 frances@constructionandbuildingphotography.com. German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. What arises from the Etonian landscape are more shades, prefiguring future loss: "Ministers of human fate," Anger, Fear, Shame, images of desire defeated: "Or pineing Love shall waste their youth, / Or Jealousy with rankling tooth." Father Thames authorizes the speaker's vision; he is a silent confirmatory figure, another version of the tutelary muse. In the "Hymn to Ignorance" Gray returns to Cambridge, invoking its "gothic fanes, and antiquated towers" as he had Eton's "distant spires" and "antique towers." In April 1917, after a traumatic period of action, he was diagnosed with what became known as shell-shock, and was sent back to Britain. There is a confusing number of Francis Gray/Grey profiles here (marked as unmerged or rejected merges) with similar but different information. Such images bespeak futility. 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until 1945. Here the return is to the beginning of the "Elegy," to "darkness" and to the landscape over which the "plowman homeward plods his weary way." Following Dillys death from cancer in 1943, Beth works on an unsolved code, which she nicknames the Rose Code. Night, a "mighty Mother" of sorts, will hold sway "Till down the eastern cliffs afar / Hyperion's march they spy, and glitt'ring shafts of war." Lilibet : Philip's cousin. He fought at Gallipoli and then Salonika in late 1915 but was invalided out to Egypt and then returned to the UK. Dying in Westmoreland Co. in 1667, Sept. 20,1652 he was living in Northumberland Co.( see pages 441-442)[6], A land patent for 675 acres for Francis Gray was recorded May 24,1654. William Wordsworth decided in his preface to Lyrical Ballads (1798), using Gray's "Sonnet on the Death of Richard West" (1775) as his example, that Gray, governed by a false idea of poetic diction, spoke in the wrong language; and Matthew Arnold, in an equally well-known judgment, remarked that the age was wrong for a poetry of high seriousness, that Gray was blighted by his age and never spoke out at all. The other major difference is that Thos' son died around 1679, when his wife Mary administrated his estate. In November 1942, Mab, Francis, Lucy, and Osla take a holiday in Coventry, where Lucy and Francis are killed in an air raid. A girl who was seeing an American officer. Three distinct women from different backgrounds become the unlikeliest of friends when they work at the sprawling red-brick Victorian with a green roof, especially at buildings called Huts. Read more quotes from Francis Gray. Mountbatten. Login to find your connection. The author imagines complicated romances, inspired by a real one, offering delicious escapes for the toiling cryptologists and the reader. Learn how your comment data is processed. degree in November 1743. Scottish minister, professor of theology, political economist. "), and voice lost. [4] It was Grey's only novel, although he published academic non-fiction, poetry and theatrical plays.[1]. Beth smuggles messages out of Clockwell Sanitarium to Osla and Mab, asking for help and telling them that someone at BP framed her. If so, we can learn how to drop me and add you as the manager. From Bletchley Bletherings, September 1941. They crack the code a few hours before the royal wedding between Philip and Elizabeth. Gray turns her story romantic and dangerous. From Bletchley Bletherings, February 1942. The poem therefore offers a model for reading Gray's early poetry, in which the various rejections of desire are the major adventure of the speaker of the poems. What here dominates Gray's imagination is a vision of prophecy reduced to absurdity, of the seer as merely a bothersome miscreant. 267-. Frances Grey (disambiguation) Francis Gray (disambiguation) This page was last edited on 20 January 2022, at 18:02 (UTC). The "Elegy" is not in this respect a conventional pastoral elegy; it does not provide the consolation of, say, Milton's Lycidas (1637). Courtship is metamorphosed into consolation, and Vicissitude becomes another figure like Contemplation or Adversity, under whose aegis desire is eliminated. 1620 - d. btw 07 Jun/31 Jul 1667),[1] immigrated from England to Maryland. David Jones (1895-1974) Image reproduced with permission of the Jones Estate. The next day she explains everything to Mab and Osla, who help her escape. At six foot tall, she's reassigned to Hut 8, where the famous mathematician Alan Turing invented the taller, ear-splitting bombe machine that streamlined codebreaking exponentially. His major work, In Parenthesis, was based on his wartime experiences and took him over a decade to produce. He pursued an academic career, and succeeded Rudyard Kipling as 'literary adviser' to the Imperial (later Commonwealth) War Graves Commission. When Philips distant cousin Lilibeth made it known she wanted to marry him and make him a prince they parted ways. Osla: fluent in German (and other languages), shes assigned to Hut 4, the Naval Station, where a string of five-letter nonsensical messages are translated into plain-texts.. George Parker Bidder (marine biologist) John Stanyan Bigg. Edit Search New Search Jump to Filters. Her plunge into the goldfish bowl is another vain dream of the desiring self. Except for his mother, fellow poet Richard West was the person most dear to Gray, and his death from consumption on June 1, 1742 was a grievous loss to the Gray. Like Osla, Charlie shines. girlfriend of Prince Philip. Gray's reading of epitaphs is a coming-to-know: he did not know these people as they lived; he knows them by the imaginative re-creation of their lives through a meditation on the surviving memorials. Kit : One of Francis Gray's friends. After being exposed to gas duringThird Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele) in September 1917, Gurney was sent back to Britain for treatment. Everyone awaits the inevitable hour. 2008 - 2023 INTERESTING.COM, INC. She is a "soft salutary power" ("Hymn to Ignorance"), "form benign" ("Hymn to Adversity"). Seeing that Mrs. Finch dominates her adult daughter, Beth, Mab and Osla help Beth become more social and help her get a position at BP. Ignorance is ambivalently represented as undesirable within the terms of desire ("Thrice hath Hyperion rolled his annual race, / Since weeping I forsook thy fond embrace"). [2] Historically, these women stand out as all were civilians whereas most BP women were snatched from Britains naval, air, and auxiliary army services. Selima's desire to apprehend "Two angel forms / The Genii of the stream," is an investment in death. He won a classical scholarship to St John's College, Oxford, in 1914, but instead obtained a commission in the Royal Welch Fusiliers. Poems by Mr. Gray (1768) includes two translations from the Norse. The paradox is spawned by Gray's vision of human life as dominated by the only inevitability it contains, that of death. To commemorate the centennial of World War I, we present a selection of poets who served as soldiers, medical staff, journalists, or volunteers. In December 1761 he returned to Cambridge; except for frequent trips to London, other parts of England, Scotland, and Wales, he remained in Cambridge for the rest of his life. An English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. I am not sure where he belongs in the Gray family? Elizabeth Alexandra Mary. HOME; INTERIORS; EXTERIORS; OFFICE & PORTRAITS; PUBLICITY/EVENTS; CONSTRUCTION; INFO The "Ode on the Pleasure Arising from Vicissitude," written around 1754-1755 and published in 1775, recreates, through the language of kindredness, the law of succession and cycle: "Still, where rosy Pleasure leads, / See a kindred Grief pursue." . In the last months of 1914 he wrote the five 'war sonnets' that were to make him famous, including ' Peace ' and ' The Soldier . It also provides a third version of the ticking clock: another countdown revealed in the opening chapter set in the aftermath of WWII. Thomas Gray, (born Dec. 26, 1716, Londondied July 30, 1771, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng. Gray's "Ode on the Spring" was sent to West at just about the time of his death and was returned unopened ("Sent to Fav: not knowing he was then Dead," Gray noted on the manuscript in his commonplace book; Favonius was Gray's affectionate name for West). As World War II begins, debutante Osla Kendall seeks to contribute to the war effort. The principle of authority (and desire) is found in Vicissitude, a figure who imposes an Adversity-like "chastening": "The hues of Bliss more brightly glow, /Chastised by sabler tints of woe."The ode negates its initial figure of desire, "the golden Morn aloft" who. "The Progress of Poesy" associates the solitary poet with his mother-muse, the female goddess to whom he owes his capacity to perceive "forms" illuminated by "the Muse's ray," a light that is "unborrow'd of the Sun." "Numbers would give their oaths upon it, I have found a Francis Gray ,(servant) , transported by Joseph Johnson,June 19,1625. Francis William Grey Birth: 8 January 1860 Bathampton, Somerset, England, United Kingdom Death: July 1939 Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, United Kingdom Father: George Grey (1809-1891) Mother: Jane Frances Stuart (1822-1892) Spouse / partner: Jessie Macleod Rolland (1852-1928) Wedding: 22 December 1885 Sex: Edit Facts Biography Spies on-the-ground are what The Alice Network is based on: a real network of WWI female spies. British cryptographer and Royal Navy Commander. The eye of the speaker moves along the periphery of vision and returns to its center, the churchyard where "The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep." British statesman served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. They visit BP one last time. Adversity and Virtue are both daughters of Jove; the former is older than and tutor to the latter. Madness at this blinking madhouse is another recurring theme since the burden of secrecy took its toll and oddballs were recruited. She refuses. The well-known opening of Elegy, "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, / The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, / The plowman homeward plods his weary way, / And leaves the world to darkness and to me," echoes lines from John Milton and William Shakespeare (and is echoed later by James Beattie and Wordsworth). Instead, he and Horace Walpole sailed from Dover on March 29,1739 for a Continental tour. It states: m. Alice Moorman (immigrated to Virginia in 1637). In his later years, he continued to attend battalion reunions and revisited his old battlefields. After leaving school at 12, he worked as a miner and labourer while becoming an active trade unionist, local councillor and Secretary of the Slane Corps of the Irish Volunteers. Dried up the cows and lam'd the deer, English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian. The Eton College ode identifies the progress of human life in terms of absolute separation between youth and age. The poem is an exercise in sensibility. [2] Jane : Osla's co-worker. Here another young, charming, determined socialite, Charlie, gets entangled with a reclusive older woman, Eve, who was a spy in the network. Following a period of immense creativity, his mental illness overwhelmed him and in 1922, he was committed to Barnwood House Asylum in Gloucester, and then the City of London Mental Hospital in Dartford, Kent. The Rose Code is the longest, clocking in at over 600 pages. ). William Billington (poet) Charles Smith Bird. Brought before her authority the poet disavows himself: "He once or twice had pen'd a sonnet; Full name of Elizabeth II - the Queen of the United Kingdom. When she is forced to cut off communication for security reasons, he leaves her for Princess Elizabeth. The "Ode on the Spring" (1748) owes something to an ode West sent Gray on May 5, 1742 and An Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (1747) may owe something to West's "Ode to Mary Magdelene." One function of prophecy is to transform desire into "pineing Love" or the "fury Passions." Robert Graves was the son of a British father and a German mother. Brooke was travelling to the Dardanelles with the Hood Battalion, in March 1915, when he was taken ill in Egypt. From Apollinaire to Rilke, and from Brooke to Sassoon: a sampling of poets writing during World War I. German composer and musician of the Baroque era. Fulfillment may require, as with Gray, that a protective maternal figure displace a threatening female judicial figure; guilt is thereby dissipated in the approval received by the obedient actor who has rejected desire. Francis Thompson died in 1907 at the tragically young age of forty-seven. Jean : Beth's co-worker. The "prophetic Maid" is revealed as the "Mother of the giant-brood." Beth endures a steep, nine-month, nerve-wracking learning curve that drives her nuts. He showed a talent for drawing and writing as a child but his family could not afford to send him to art school, instead, in1911 three benefactors financed his entry to the Slade School of Art. Francis Grey may refer to: Francis William Grey (1860-1939), British-born Canadian writer and academic; . The initial act of wooing becomes another sort of engagement, Grief pursuing rosy Pleasure, Comfort approaching Misery. Selima, Walpole's cat in "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes" (1748), is tempted beyond "lawful prize" into a watery grave. Metcalf originates in Yorkshire, England. Their stories highlight the social changes brought on by World War II, especially concerning gender dynamics. The speaker who experiences Adversity's "milder influence," her "philosophic Train," undergoes a transformation in which guilt is changed into the generous emotions of love and forgiveness. This common denominator of sympathy, as everything in the poem evidences, is all that binds man to man, and, along with the fact of death that occasions this sympathy, is the single principle of unity within life perceived by the poet. Elizabeth Bentley (writer) Mary Matilda Betham. Each woman had her own reason for wanting to prove herself. If so, login to add it. She forms a strong friendship with Dilly Knox, her mentor at BP. At the end he "plung[es] to endless night," another entrance into darkness. Set in England during and just after World War II, the novel follows the experiences of three women who participate in Bletchley Parks codebreaking operation, as well as their efforts after the war to uncover a traitor among their colleagues. Wilfrid Scawen Blunt. Click here to search products using title name,author name and keywords. Francis Gray (b. Kate Quinn is the author of several historical fiction novels for adults, including The Empress of Rome series and The Alice Network. ": Maryland (later moved to Westmoreland, VA). Devastated, Mab withdraws from her friendships and drinks heavily. An English novelist and short story writer. He was Prince Philip's uncle. A girl striving to make a better life for her mother and young sister. "Descendants of Francis Gray," (1904). Francis is 26 degrees from Pope Saint John Paul II Wojtyla, 19 degrees from Pope Urban VIII Barberini, 18 degrees from Pope Alexander VI Borgia, 38 degrees from Pope Pius VII Chiaramonti, 27 degrees from Pope John XI di Roma, 26 degrees from Pope Victor II Dollnstein-Hirschberg, 24 degrees from Pope St Leo IX Egisheim, 19 degrees from Pope Leo X Medici, 24 degrees from Blessed Pope Innocent XI Odescalchi, 22 degrees from Pope Benedict XIII Orsini, 19 degrees from Pope Pius II Piccolomini and 19 degrees from Fiona McMichael on our single family tree. American film, stage, and television actress. A spinster under the thumb of her overbearing mother .aka: Beth. Later, Mab learns that Beth decrypted a message identifying Coventry as target and failed to warn them. From 1725-1734 Thomas Gray attended Eton, where he met Richard West and Horace Walpole, son of the powerful Whig minister, Sir Robert Walpole. How does she keep up the pace, writing three big, thrilling historical spy novels every two years? This summary also describes the "Hymn to Adversity." A commonplace book, in three volumes, at Pembroke College, Cambridge, contains Thomas Gray's transcripts of many of his poems and transcripts of other of Gray's poems made by William Mason after Gray's death. Later, Mab learns that Beth decrypted a message identifying Coventry as target and failed to warn them. He was wounded in April 1917 but returned to duty as a machine-gunner on the Arras front. On March 5, 1756 he moved from Peterhouse College across the street to Pembroke College, reportedly as a consequence of a prank played on him by some students who, knowing of his fear of fire, raised a false alarm. 2023 Enchanted Prose All Rights Reserved, Dont Think, Dear: On Loving and Leaving Ballet, Koala: A Natural History and an Uncertain Future, Objects of Love and Regret: A Brooklyn Story, Pow! The ode revisits another place, as Eton is revisited by the disillusioned speaker in, Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes, Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes, Frank Brady, "Structure and Meaning in Gray's, Lord David Cecil, "The Poetry of Thomas Gray," in, Francis Doherty, "The Two Voices of Gray,", Donald Green, "The Proper Language of Poetry: Gray, Johnson, and Others," in, Leon Guilhamet, "Imitation and Originality in the Poems of Thomas Gray," in, Wallace Jackson, "Thomas Gray and the Dedicatory Muse,", Jackson, "Thomas Gray: Drowning in Human Voices,", Jackson and Paul Yoder, "Wordsworth Reimagines Thomas Gray: Notations on Begetting a Kindred Spirit,", Samuel Johnson, "Life of Thomas Gray," in his, Roger Lonsdale, "The Poetry of Thomas Gray: Versions of Self,", Patricia Meyer Spacks, "'Artful Strife': Conflict in Gray's Poetry,", Spacks, "Statement and Artifice in Thomas Gray,". Look well therefore to this day.". Philip. If in the end everyone is alone, solitude is qualified by shared mortality, and further qualified by the presence of a kindred sensibility. After 1742 he wrote poetry only sporadically.