Elegy
A poem of mourning, usually for someone who has died. A traditional elegy moves from grief through praise of the dead to some kind of comfort or acceptance.
- Elegy
- A poem that works through grief
- Eulogy
- A speech praising the dead at a funeral
In practice
An elegy is a poem that mourns, most often for a person who has died, though it can grieve for a place, a time or a way of life. It has no fixed form today. What makes it an elegy is the movement of feeling: from loss, through memory and praise, toward some comfort or acceptance, even if the comfort is incomplete.
In ancient Greek and Latin, an elegy was any poem in elegiac couplets, a line of six beats followed by a line of five, and the subject could be love as easily as death. English poets kept the name for poems of mourning. John Milton's "Lycidas" (1637) and Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751) set the pattern.
The pastoral elegy, which mourns the dead as a shepherd and has nature grieve with the poet, runs from Theocritus to Milton and Percy Shelley's "Adonais". Modern elegies are often plainer and angrier, and some refuse comfort altogether.
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Elegy examples
Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" mourns the unknown poor buried in a village graveyard. Alfred Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H." (1850) spends years grieving his friend Arthur Hallam. Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" (1865) mourns Abraham Lincoln.
W. H. Auden's "Funeral Blues" ("Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone") is a modern elegy that refuses comfort. Its reading at a funeral in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) shows how an elegy can work inside a story: a scene can let a poem carry grief a character could not say in their own words.
How to write an elegy
Start with specific memories rather than general sadness: a habit, an object, a sentence the person used to say. The details do the mourning. Let the poem move, from the fact of the loss, through what the person was, toward what remains.
Decide where the poem ends: in consolation, in acceptance, or in grief that will not resolve. All three are honest. Read it aloud, because elegies are often spoken at funerals and memorials, and the sound of the lines matters as much as the words.
Elegy vs. eulogy
An elegy is a poem of mourning. A eulogy is a speech that praises someone who has died, usually given at the funeral. A eulogy is written in prose and spoken to the people gathered; an elegy is a poem and can be read anywhere.
The two meet often: people read elegies as part of a eulogy, and a eulogy can borrow an elegy's movement from grief to comfort. The difference is form and occasion, not feeling.
Common questions
What is an elegy?
An elegy is a poem of mourning, usually for someone who has died. It typically moves from grief through praise of the dead toward comfort or acceptance.
What is the difference between an elegy and a eulogy?
An elegy is a poem of mourning. A eulogy is a prose speech praising the dead, usually given at a funeral.
What is a famous elegy?
Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard" (1751), Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H." and Auden's "Funeral Blues" are among the best known.
Does an elegy have to rhyme?
No. Many classic elegies rhyme, but an elegy is defined by its subject and its movement of feeling, not by a rhyme scheme or a fixed form.
What is a pastoral elegy?
A pastoral elegy mourns the dead as a shepherd, with nature grieving alongside the poet. Milton's "Lycidas" and Shelley's "Adonais" are examples.