William Empson criticized the stanza of this poem beginning "Full many a gem of purest ray serene" for its endorsement of a rigid class system.  
William Empson criticized the stanza of this poem beginning "Full many a gem of purest ray serene" for its endorsement of a rigid class system.  At the end, the poet imagines a "hoary-headed swain" who observes him muttering his wayward fancies and points to his epitaph, which states that "Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth, / And Melancholy marked him for her own."  FTP, identify this poem first published in 1751, which begins "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day," the best known work of Thomas Gray.
William Empson criticized the stanza of this poem beginning "Full many a gem of purest ray serene" for its endorsement of a rigid class system.  
"Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"