Elegy

The poem of lament — for the dead, the lost, or a faded world — from Greek mourning verse to Gray's churchyard.

Specifications & Metrics

type

Lyric poetic form

origin

Ancient Greece and Rome

originator

Greek lament tradition (Callinus, Theognis)

meter

Classical elegiac couplets; English iambic pentameter quatrains

Core Principles & Analysis

• In Greek and Latin it named any poem in elegiac couplets, whatever the mood.
• The English elegiac stanza — abab pentameter quatrains — comes from Gray's Elegy.
• Milton's Lycidas and Tennyson's In Memoriam anchor the tradition of public mourning.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Elegy