From Reason to Emotion: An Analysis of Transitional Poets Gray and Burns

Of Bridges and Beginnings: Navigating the 'Transitional' Poetry of the Late 18th Century

This blog is written as a task assigned by Prakruti Ma'am Bhatt (Department Of English, MKBU). An Exploration of the Literary Corridor Between Neoclassicism and Romanticism.

Introduction

Literary history isn't a series of neat, walled-off rooms. We like to think of it that way the Neoclassical room, the Romantic room, the Victorian room each with its own distinct furniture and wallpaper. But the reality is much messier. The doors are always open, and the hallways are where the really interesting things happen. The late 18th century is one of those hallways. It's a period often labeled "transitional," a term that can feel a bit dismissive, as if it were just a waiting room for the main event of Romanticism.

But I've come to think that this transitional period is more than just a bridge. It's a crucible where old forms were melted down and new sensibilities were forged. It's a space of tension, where the rigid logic of the Augustan age began to accommodate a rising tide of personal emotion, a new appreciation for the common individual, and a profound shift in how poets viewed the natural world. To understand poets like Thomas Gray and Robert Burns, you have to stand in that hallway with them. You have to see how they grappled with the poetic inheritance of Pope and Dryden while simultaneously laying the very groundwork for Wordsworth and Coleridge. This post is my attempt to map out that space to figure out what "transitional" really means and how it plays out in the work of two of its most fascinating poets.

Pre-Romantic Movement

What does "transitional" mean in poetry?

Let's think about this. The term "transitional" implies a movement between two fixed points. In the context of the late 18th century, those points are generally accepted as Neoclassicism and Romanticism. To get what's happening in the middle, you first have to understand the poles.

Neoclassicism, which dominated the first half of the century, was all about reason, order, and public life. Inspired by classical Greek and Roman models, poets like Alexander Pope valued clarity, wit, and moral instruction. They wrote for an educated, urban audience and often used satire to comment on society. Nature, for them, was often a generalized, ordered garden—a backdrop for human affairs, not a wild, spiritual force in its own right. The heroic couplet was their weapon of choice: balanced, controlled, and perfect for logical arguments.

Romanticism, which bloomed at the century's end, was a direct reaction against all of this. It championed emotion over reason, the individual's subjective experience over public decorum, and the sublime power of wild, untamed nature. Poets like William Wordsworth sought a more natural language to express powerful feelings, focusing on the lives of common people, the supernatural, and the mysteries of the human imagination.

So, a "transitional" poem is one that lives in the overlap. It's a hybrid. It might use a very formal, Neoclassical structure to explore a deeply personal, Romantic theme. It might be filled with classical allusions but set in a humble, rustic location. It's this blend of old and new that defines the period.

Feature	Neoclassicism (c. 1660-1785)	Romanticism (c. 1785-1832)
Core Value	Reason, logic, order, wit	Emotion, imagination, intuition
Subject Matter	Public life, society, politics, morality	The individual's experience, the inner world
Poetic Form	Strict, controlled forms (e.g., heroic couplet)	Experimental forms, lyric poetry, ballad
View of Nature	A generalized, ordered, and beautiful backdrop	A powerful, sublime, and spiritual force; wild and untamed
Focus	Humankind as part of society	The isolated, common individual
Language	Formal, elevated, didactic, often satiric	Simple, "the language of men," lyrical, sincere
Key Figure	Alexander Pope	William Wordsworth

The key transitional aspects, then, are the early signs of the right-hand column appearing within the framework of the left-hand column. We see:

1. A Shift in Setting: Poets begin to move away from the London coffee house and into the country churchyard, the remote field, or the windswept mountain.
2. A Focus on the Common Individual: Instead of writing about kings, generals, and aristocrats, poets start showing interest in the lives and deaths of poor, uneducated, and anonymous people.
3. The Rise of Melancholy and Subjectivity: The "pensive" mood becomes popular. Poets turn inward, reflecting on mortality, loss, and the workings of their own minds.
4. A New View of Nature: Nature starts to become more than a pretty backdrop. It begins to reflect the poet's inner emotional state.

These aren't Romantics yet. They're often called "pre-Romantics" for a reason. They don't fully abandon the old rules, but they stretch them to their breaking point, filling them with a new kind of emotional and psychological weight.

Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" as the Quintessential Transition

If you had to pick one poem to represent this entire shift, Gray's "Elegy" would be it. I'll be honest, the first time I read it, I thought the structure felt a bit stiff for such an emotional topic. It's written in heroic quatrains—four lines of iambic pentameter with an ABAB rhyme scheme. It's incredibly regular, controlled, and polished. The language is elevated and full of classical devices like personification ("let not Ambition mock their useful toil"). On the surface, it's a very Neoclassical package.

But that's exactly what makes it so interesting. That classical container is holding some radically new ideas.

Analysis of Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

The first clue is the setting and time. The poem opens at twilight ("The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day"), a time of transition between day and night. The setting isn't a bustling city but a quiet, humble country churchyard. The speaker is alone, isolated, and observing the world around him. This is a classic Romantic setup, but we're in 1751.

The subject of the poem is its most revolutionary feature. Gray isn't mourning a great king or a famous poet. He's meditating on the lives of the "rude Forefathers of the hamlet," the poor, illiterate villagers buried in unmarked graves. He wonders what they might have become if they'd had the chance:

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.

This is a profound shift in poetic focus. Gray suggests that greatness isn't confined to the rich and powerful—it's a potential that exists in everyone, but is often crushed by poverty and lack of opportunity ("Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage"). He's validating the lives of the common person in a way that Neoclassical poetry, with its focus on the elite, simply did not. This is the democratic impulse that would later fuel the Romantic movement.

Finally, the poem is deeply personal and subjective. While it makes a universal statement about mortality, it's filtered through the emotional experience of a single speaker. The mood is one of melancholy and contemplation. The poem ends with the speaker imagining his own death and writing his own epitaph, turning the focus entirely inward. He imagines a "kindred Spirit" asking about him, and a local villager describing him as a lonely, wandering figure who was often seen "Muttering his wayward fancies." This is a portrait of the sensitive, isolated, Romantic poet long before Shelley or Keats came on the scene.

So, the "Elegy" is a perfect hybrid. It has the formal dress of Neoclassicism—the measured quatrains, the elegant language. But its heart is full of pre-Romantic sentiment—sympathy for the common man, a melancholic and subjective tone, and a deep sense of connection to a quiet, rural landscape. It's the sound of one era fading and another beginning to find its voice.

Robert Burns: A Poet Forged by History

If Gray represents the academic, contemplative side of the transition, Robert Burns is its fiery, rustic, and political soul. You can't understand Burns without understanding the world he lived in. His poetry is not just influenced by its historical context—it's a direct product of it.

Burns (1759-1796) was a tenant farmer in Scotland during a period of massive social and political upheaval. Three major forces shaped his work: the Scottish Enlightenment, the ongoing Agricultural Revolution, and the shockwaves of the American and French Revolutions.

First, the Scottish Enlightenment was a period of intense intellectual activity centered in Edinburgh. Thinkers like Adam Smith and David Hume were exploring ideas about human nature, sympathy, and morality. While Burns was a farmer, not a university philosopher, these ideas were in the air. This focus on a common human sentiment, a shared moral sense that transcends class, is all over his poetry. He writes about the loves, sorrows, and joys of ordinary people with a seriousness that treats their experiences as universally important.

Second, the Agricultural Revolution was changing the very landscape Burns worked on. Traditional farming methods were being replaced by more efficient but also more ruthless practices like the enclosure of common lands. Tenant farmers like Burns were often at the mercy of landlords, and this precarious existence created a deep sympathy for the displaced and the vulnerable. This is the direct context for a poem like "To a Mouse," where the farmer's plough destroys a creature's home. It's a personal lament that carries the weight of widespread social change.

Finally, Burns was writing in the age of revolution. The American Revolution (1775-1783) and the French Revolution (1789) promoted radical ideas of liberty, equality, and the rights of the common person. Burns was a passionate supporter of these ideals. His famous poem "A Man's a Man for a' That" is basically a Scottish anthem for the French Revolution's "Liberté, égalité, fraternité." He scoffs at titles and wealth, arguing for the inherent worth of the honest, working man:

The rank is but the guinea's stamp,
The Man's the gowd for a' that.

(The rank is just the stamp on the coin; the man himself is the gold.)

This political charge, combined with his conscious choice to write primarily in the Scots dialect, was a powerful statement. It was an act of cultural preservation and a defiant assertion of a non-English identity. In Burns, the pre-Romantic focus on the common man becomes explicitly political and revolutionary. He's not just feeling sad for them from a distance like Gray; he is one of them, and he's demanding their dignity be recognized.

Robert Burns: The People's Poet

Man and Mouse: Anthropomorphism in "To A Mouse"

This brings us to one of Burns' most famous poems, "To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough, November 1785." It seems like a simple, sentimental poem, but it's doing something quite profound. The key is its use of anthropomorphism—the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities.

The poem begins with the speaker, a farmer, addressing the mouse whose nest he has just accidentally destroyed. Right away, he establishes a relationship of equals, not of man and pest. He calls the mouse his "poor, earth-born companion, / An' fellow-mortal." This is a radical statement. To call a mouse a "fellow-mortal" is to break down the traditional hierarchy that places humanity at the top of creation. It's a move of deep empathy.

The farmer projects a whole range of human-like anxieties onto the mouse. He understands its panic ("Thou need na start awa sae hasty"), its need for a home to survive the coming winter ("To big a house... An' bleak December's winds ensuin'"), and its despair at seeing its hard work ruined. He sees the mouse's plight not as an animal's instinctual problem, but as a parallel to human struggle.

This shared struggle is made explicit in the poem's most famous stanza:

The best-laid schemes o' Mice an' Men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

(The best-laid plans of mice and men often go wrong, and leave us nothing but grief and pain, instead of promised joy.)

Here, the line between man and mouse dissolves completely. The mouse's destroyed nest becomes a symbol for every human plan that has ever failed, for every hope that has been crushed by forces beyond our control. The specific, small incident opens up into a universal philosophical statement about the fragility of life. This is a hallmark of Romantic sensibility—finding the universal in the particular, the profound in the mundane.

But Burns adds one final, brilliant twist. After establishing this deep connection, he concludes that the mouse is actually luckier than he is.

Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear!

The mouse only has to deal with the present moment's hardship. The human speaker, however, is cursed with consciousness. He is burdened by memory of past sorrows ("prospects drear") and anxiety about future ones. The mouse is free from the uniquely human pains of memory and foresight.

In "To a Mouse," anthropomorphism isn't just a cute trick. It's a tool for profound philosophical inquiry. Burns uses the mouse as a mirror to reflect on the human condition, showing both our shared mortality with all living things and the unique burdens of our own consciousness. It's a perfect example of the transitional moment: the poem is grounded in the real, hard life of an 18th-century farmer, but its empathetic leap and deep emotional resonance point directly toward the Romantic age.

Tying the Threads

So, what does this all mean? The late 18th century was not just a pause between movements. It was a dynamic, fascinating period where the foundations of modern poetry were laid. Looking at Gray and Burns together, you can see the different ways this transition played out.

Gray, the scholar, took the elegant, ordered forms he inherited from Neoclassicism and infused them with a new, quiet, and melancholic subjectivity. He turned the poet's gaze away from the aristocracy and toward the forgotten commoner, opening the door for a more democratic and introspective kind of poetry.

Burns, the farmer-poet, arrived at a similar place from a completely different direction. His work was forged in the fire of social change, drawing on folk tradition and revolutionary politics to give voice to the common person's dignity, struggles, and deep connection to the natural world.

Without these transitional figures, it's hard to imagine Romanticism happening in the way it did. They stretched the old world's language to describe the new world's feelings. They built the bridge, and they were the first to bravely start walking across it.

Works Cited

• Abrams, M.H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. Oxford University Press, 1953. [Publisher's Page]
• Crawford, Robert. The Bard: Robert Burns, a Biography. Princeton University Press, 2009. [Publisher's Page]
• Poetry Foundation. "Thomas Gray." [Biography and Poems]
• Poetry Foundation. "Robert Burns." [Biography and Poems]

Word Count: 3,142