<P> "Elegy" contemplates such themes as death and afterlife . These themes foreshadowed the upcoming Gothic movement . It is suggested that perhaps Gray found inspiration for his poem by visiting the gravesite of his aunt, Mary Antrobus . The aunt was buried at the graveyard by the St. Giles' churchyard, which he and his mother would visit . This is the same gravesite where Gray himself was later buried . </P> <P> Gray also wrote light verse, including Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes, a mock elegy concerning Horace Walpole's cat . After setting the scene with the couplet "What female heart can gold despise? What cat's averse to fish?", the poem moves to its multiple proverbial conclusion: "a fav'rite has no friend", "(k) now one false step is ne'er retrieved" and "nor all that glisters, gold". (Walpole later displayed the fatal china vase (the tub) on a pedestal at his house in Strawberry Hill .) </P> <P> Gray's surviving letters also show his sharp observation and playful sense of humour . He is well known for his phrase, "where ignorance is bliss,' tis folly to be wise ." The phrase, from Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, is possibly one of the most misconstrued phrases in English literature . Gray is not promoting ignorance, but is reflecting with nostalgia on a time when he was allowed to be ignorant, his youth (1742). It has been asserted that the Ode also abounds with images which find "a mirror in every mind". This was stated by Samuel Johnson who said of the poem, "I rejoice to concur with the common reader...The Church - yard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo". Indeed, Gray's poem follows the style of the mid-century literary endeavor to write of "universal feelings ." Samuel Johnson also said of Gray that he spoke in "two languages". He spoke in the language of "public" and "private" and according to Johnson, he should have spoken more in his private language as he did in his "Elegy" poem . </P> <P> Gray considered his two Pindaric odes, The Progress of Poesy and The Bard, as his best works . Pindaric odes are to be written with fire and passion, unlike the calmer and more reflective Horatian odes such as Ode on a distant Prospect of Eton College . The Bard tells of a wild Welsh poet cursing the Norman king Edward I after his conquest of Wales and prophesying in detail the downfall of the House of Plantagenet . It is melodramatic, and ends with the bard hurling himself to his death from the top of a mountain . </P>

Who wrote where ignorance is bliss it's folly to be wise
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