But now the word elegy normally refers to the poems written on the subject of death of someone or great loss of any kind. Elegies written in English frequently take the form of the pastoral elegy. Since the seventeenth century, the elegy has typically been used to refer to reflective poems that lament the loss of something or someone, although in Elizabethan times it was also used to refer to certain love poems. Thomas Gray’s “Elegy in a Country Churchyard” is a famous English elegy where Gray expresses the sorrowful feelings which arise in his mind on seeing the grave of the poor country people buried near the church. During Elizabethan times Elegy referred to love poems. Elegiac meter is constructed in alternating dactylic hexameter and pentameter lines. In Greek and Roman times Elegy referred to any poem composed in elegiac meter. It shows Arnold’s elegiac genius at its best.Įlegy refers to reflective poems that lament the loss or death of someone or something. “Rugby Chapel”, for example, is a personal elegy in which the poet mourns the death of his father.

In this way we get his philosophy of life and death. In a personal elegy the poet laments the death of some close friend or relative, and in impersonal elegy in which the poet grieves over human destiny or over some aspect of contemporary life and literature. Elegies are of two kinds: Personal Elegy and Impersonal Elegy.

Elegy poem example