Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air. How do the images in these lines from “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by Thomas Gray give the reader a powerful sense of what is unknown or lost? The power of these lines stem from the anger with which the speaker views the wastefulness of death. The lines are poignant because they illustrate that, after our own deaths, life will go on in the world. The poignancy of the lines comes from the idea that, after death, one can no longer know the beauty of nature. The poignancy of the lines comes from the thought that the beauty of a human can go unappreciated by anyone.