nd "He gained from Heaven('twas all he wished) a friend." By saying, "Their growing virtues, but their crimes confined", "They kept the noiseless tenor of their way," Gray demonstrates his belief that the poor live more pious lives than the rich. This illustrates an ideal central to the Romantics: money corrupts and therefore, the individual peasant is just as important as the king. The poor are further "insulted" by life with a "frail memorial" marking their grave while the rich have memorials of splendid futility. In the epitaph, the poet realizes that at birth "Melancholy marked him for her own" and that "He gave to Misery all he had, a tear"; he owned nothing he could give away but his own suffering and toil. Gray wishes to be remembered as a man whose "soul was sincere" and because he lived a virtuous life, "Heaven did a recompense as largely send" to reward him and all the other poor men who lead purer lives than the corrupt rich.
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