élégie

An elegy is a sad poem, usually written to praise and express sorrow for someone who is dead. Although a speech at a funeral is a eulogy, you might later compose an elegy to someone you have loved and lost to the grave. The purpose of this kind of poem is to express feelings rather than tell a story.

For instance, Elton John's “Candle In The Wind” can be considered an example of an elegy. The song in question is known for being performed at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. Examples of elegies originally in the poetic form include “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard” by the English poet Thomas Gray.

An elegy, defined most broadly, is a work of literature or music written to mourn a loss. Elegies are most common in poetry and music. Famous examples in poems include. "O Captain, My Captain" by Walt Whitman. "Stop All the Clocks" and "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" by W.H. Auden.

a mournful or plaintive poem or song, esp a lament for the dead. 2. poetry or a poem written in elegiac couplets or stanzas. ▶ USAGE Avoid confusion with eulogy. Collins English Dictionary.

The word elegy derives from the Greek élegos, "funeral lament.” It was among the first forms of the ancients, though in Greek literature it refers to a specific verse form as well as the emotions conveyed by it. Any poem using the particular meter of the elegiac couplet or elegiac distich was termed an elegy.

On this page you'll find 15 synonyms, antonyms, and words related to elegy, such as: knell, lament, plaint, requiem, threnody, and death song.

An elegy is a poem, and it has a particular kind of emotion driving it. That emotion is lament, meaning to feel and express sorrow, and to mourn for something - and, yes, elegies are very often about someone who has died, but it might also be something that has died, say, a feeling, or a relationship.

List of Popular Elegy Poems

• "In Memory of W.B. Yeats" by W.H. Auden.
• "To An Athlete Dying Young" by A.E. Housman.
• "Because I Could Not Stop For Death" by Emily Dickinson.
• "Death Stands Above Me" by Walter Savage Landor.
• "Dirge Without Music" by Edna St.
• "Lycidas" by John Milton.
• "In Memoriam A.H.H." by Alfred Lord Tennyson.

Death the over reaching is the main theme in Elegy Written in a country Churchyard, is the inevitable fate of humanity regardless of wealth, power, and status.

adjectiveAlso el·e·gi·a·cal. used in, suitable for, or resembling an elegy. expressing sorrow or lamentation: elegiac strains.

An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead.

Examples include John Milton's “Lycidas”; Alfred, Lord Tennyson's “In Memoriam”; and Walt Whitman's “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd.” More recently, Peter Sacks has elegized his father in “Natal Command,” and Mary Jo Bang has written “You Were You Are Elegy” and other poems for her son.