ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -The poem, ‘Hymn to Adversity’, written in 1742, like the ‘Ode on Spring’ and the ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College’, belongs to the first period of Gray’s poetic career.

Detailed explanation-2: -In this stanza of ‘Hymn to Adversity’, the poet expresses his desire to be reformed gently by Adversity whose function, as decided by Jove, is to bring about an improvement in the character and the conduct of all human beings on this earth.

Detailed explanation-3: -Thomas Gray, (born Dec. 26, 1716, London-died July 30, 1771, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Eng.), English poet whose “An Elegy Written in a Country Church Yard” is one of the best known of English lyric poems.

Detailed explanation-4: -Gray is regarded by many as a “pre-Romantic” because his poetry signals a shift from the characteristics of the Augustan age with its public focus, heroic couplets, and satire to the Romantic age with its focus on private thoughts, lyrical poems with alternating rhyme schemes, and exploration of the self.