The pastoral ideal in the elegy (eulogy) of Thomas Gray written in a country churchyard "The elegy written in a country churchyard " by Thomas Gray portrays the pastoral ideal through many different images. The traditional pastoral notion of idyllic life changes in this poem to create a connection with the people themselves. The speaker of this poem creates a process through which workers come to symbolize the perfection of pastoral care through their daily labors. These people come to represent the ideal form of pastoral life. In this poem, however, Gray consigns these people and their way of life to darkness and death to save them from a world whose changing ideals support their idyllic way of life. This poem can be divided into four parts. These parts describe a kind of conversation between the speaker and the dying light of the traditional pastoral notion. The first part, ending around line 28, shows the ways in which workers have successfully integrated into the pastoral lifestyle. The second and longest part, ending around line 73, paints a portrait of an "urbanized pastoral" in which people no longer ignore their own potential, but strive to make changes in the world around them. While this in itself is not necessarily bad, the desire to change the world directly challenges the pastoral ideal of static bliss. The third section provides a resolution of sorts to the situation by letting the pastoral tradition slide, safe and sound, into the comforting darkness of death. The opening stanza paints a portrait of the end of a day. The herds of farm animals move away from the speaker towards their home, just as a tired farmer "struggles" (3) to get home. All these figures move away from the speaker until about the middle of the paper... the poet could keep the pastoral alive. The speaker addresses this concept in “Elegy Wrote in a Country Church Yard.” The “darkness” alluded to in the first stanza is the place where the world left the pastoral. As "The plowman trudges home on his weary way," (3) he leaves the realm of the pastoral behind for the speaker to address. As society begins to turn its back from imaginative simplicity to commercial complexity, the poet's duty falls to create a place where the world of the pastoral is safe. For Gray, this is the darkness of death. This poem, however, does not create this "darkness" of death as eternal sleep. Rather, the importance of pastoral care is kept safe and has the ability to influence generations of socially influenced people that there is a world of peace and simplicity awaiting them, if they choose to seek it..