Do you wish you were far from the madding crowd?

From ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’

‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,
The lowing herd wind slowly o’er the lea,
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tower
The moping owl does to the moon complain
Of such as, wandering near her secret bower,
Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.‘

Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ has always been one of the most popular poems of the 18th century. It was written in 1750 and sent to his friend Horace Walpole – inventor of the gothic novel and builder of a fantastic gothic house at Strawberry Hill.