Elegy - Definition and Overview

Originally used for a type of poetic metre (Elegiac metre), the term elegy is also used for a poem of mourning, from the Greek elegos, a reflection on the death of someone or on a sorrow generally. Some notable elegies include:

• The Elegies of Propertius
• Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc)
• 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

See also: elegiac couplet