Elegy essay

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Elegy


Elegy is a mourning poem lamenting for the dead. Death became a predominant theme for an Elegy. It was written in the elegiac measure, a couplet composed of a dactylic hexameter followed by dactylic pentameter. Poem written in this metre is ranked as elegy.

At modern times theme is given utmost importance and not metre. Elegiac measure is not followed in English verse. The theme of elegy is mournful and sad. Elegy is less spontaneous than the lyric. Dr. Johnson remarked “Where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief”.

Examples for Elegy

Milton’s Lycidas – mourns at the death of Edward King.

Tennyson’s In Memoriam – laments at the death of Arthur Henry Hallam.

Shelley’s Adonias – death of Keats

The Pastoral Elegy

A new kind of elegy was introduced in English poetry. In this kind the poet represented himself as a Shepherd bewailing the loss of a companion. Milton’s Lycidas and Mathew Arnold’s Thyrisis are pastoral elegies.Theocritus poems Idyll and Epigrams were written in pastoral manner. Further it was perfected by Latin poet Virgil.

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