Poetry Guide: Elegy

Elegy was originally used for a type of poetic metre (Elegiac metre), but is also used for a poem of mourning, from the Greek elegos, a reflection on the death of someone or on a sorrow generally. In addition, an elegy (sometimes spelled elegíe) may be a type of musical work, usually in a sad and somber attitude. Not to be confused with a eulogy. Some notable elegies include:

The Elegies of Propertius
Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
Edmund Spenser's Astrophel
John Milton's Lycidas
Percy Bysshe Shelley's Adonaïs
William Cullen Bryant's Thanatopsis
Walt Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed
Alfred Tennyson's In Memoriam
Chidiock Tichborne's Elegy

Musical Elegies:

• Élégie, Op. 24, Gabriel Faure

See also

• elegiac couplet