On this day in 1751, Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" was published. Gray was a reclusive gentleman-poet and he did not write many poems, but this one brought him immediate fame and became the most reprinted poem of the 18th century. It was written when England was on the up-slope of its mercantile and imperial power; it is a vanitas vanitatum reminder, a tribute to those county folk who chose other than "to wade through slaughter to a throne" or to "heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride" ... FULL STORY »
