Gray meditates among the graves of poor villagers, wondering what mute inglorious Miltons might be buried there. The poem took eight years to write, was immediately famous, and has never gone out of print. The stanzas move with stately melancholy through twilight landscapes and moral reflection. The paths of glory lead but to the grave: the line has become proverbial. Gray published almost nothing else; he was a perfectionist who destroyed more than he kept. The elegy is his monument, as much as any stone in the churchyard. The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea. The darkness falls.