Stanzas 1-14. It is evening and the poet is alone in a country churchyard, the sigh of the tombs of the "rude forefathers of the hamlet" call up in the poet's mind images of humble country life. The images, in symbolic elements such as: "the curfew...parting day" which suggests the sadness of the evening and the approach of the night and darkness, the counterpart of  death, the housewife's heart which suggests the fruitful life, the complaining to the moon, lead Gray to mediate on death and its levelling power, which sweeps away human differences (st.9).

Stanzas 12-13: Gray compares the humble lot of poor people with the great careers from which fate has excluded them. The poor remain anonymous because they do not have the opportunity to become famous. He says that there might be great poets, artists, politicians, leaders buried in the churchyard who never realized their potential because they were poor and uneducated (44-64). But he also considers how their poverty also prevented them from committing crimes and falling victims to luxury, pride and corruption. The life of the poor is praised, because, although lacking fame it is full of dignity and piety. Although they do not have great memorial monuments, their simple country graveyards are pitied by nature, who is a good mother for all their sons. Historical references intrude and link the second part to the first through the contrast between the simple funerals of the poor (st.21) and the great's pompous ones, a contrast emphasized by the use of capitalized personifications (Ambition is related to the mocking of simple joys and lives, Grandeur is related to a certain contempt of the simple life of the poor, Memory is related to discrimination because She raises no memorial monuments for the poor; Honour is linked to vanity since it cannot last after death; Flattery is related to uselessness, because she cannot soothe death, Knowledge is beyond the villagers' reach. Penury is related to repression because she prevented the villagers from developing their potential).

Stanzas 24-32: The poem ends with the supposed death of the author, his burial in the same churchyard and the epitaph on his tomb. A more personal note is brought into the poem, into the general themes of transience, obscurity and fame especially in the epitaph, which can be read as Gray's summing up of his own life and beliefs. "Death is final, the inevitable end of life, which comes to all alike, and makes all equal". The form and style of the poem are classical, the setting, content and tone are Romantic.