Aviya Kushner is the Contributing Editor in Poetry at BarnesandNoble.com and the Poetry Editor o/Neworld Magazine. She is a graduate of the acclaimed creative writing program in poetry atBoston University, where she received the Fitzgerald Award in Translation. Her writing on poetry has appeared in Harvard Review and The Boston Phoenix, and she has served as Poetry Coordinator for AGNI Magazine. She has given readings of her own work throughout the United States, and she teaches atMassachusettsCommunications College in Boston. In the following essay, Kushner describes the pastoral qualities of the "Elegy, " which contribute "to the sense that it tells a universal story which spans both nations and centuries."

One of the most famous poems in the history of the English language might never have been published if its author had had his way. Thomas Gray never tried to publish "Elegy Written in a Country...