Abstract
The essay investigates Gray's attempt to adapt the poetical strategies of his day to express progressive political and social ideas. The way in which Gray exploits the previous tradition of presenting social reality in poetry is the starting point of the current interpretation. Reconsideration of the historical material in the prophecy of the Bard is a challenge, however, which appeared to be too innovative and hence “obscure” for the majority of readers. The poem, which obviously refers to the prophecies in Shakespeare's dramas, aimed in fact to pronounce a judgement upon Gray's own age as well. As Gray places his action in British natural settings, arranged in a Miltonic sublime space, his utterance gains the ability to deliver certain political statements, in which the Whig conservative Utopia is identified. Gray's poetocentric social project appears then to be a radical response to his own meditations in the Elegy that no spiritual potential should ever be wasted on Earth.