Elegy

Elegy was originally used for a type of poetic metre (Elegiac metre), but is also used for a poem of mourning, from the Greek elegos, a reflection on the death of someone or on a sorrow generally - which is a form of lyric poetry. An elegy can also reflect on something which seems strange or mysterious to the author. In addition, an elegy (sometimes spelled elegíe) may be a type of musical work, usually in a sad and somber attitude. It is not to be confused with a eulogy. Some notable elegies include:

• Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse
• The Elegies of Propertius
• Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
• Edmund Spenser's Astrophel
• John Milton's Lycidas
• Percy Bysshe Shelley's Adonaïs
• Evgeny Baratynsky's Autumn
• William Cullen Bryant's Thanatopsis
• Jan Kochanowski's Treny
• Walt Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
• Alfred Tennyson's In Memoriam
• Chidiock Tichborne's Elegy
• The Old English poems The Wanderer, Beowulf and The Seafarer
• Charlotte Turner Smith's Elegiac Poems
• Rainer Maria Rilke's Duino Elegies
• Kamau Brathwaite's Kumina
• Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens

Musical elegies:

• Continuo lacrimas, Jacob van Vaet on the death of Jacob Clemens non Papa
• Death Hath Deprived Me, Thomas Weelkes on the death of Thomas Morley
• Elegy (Netherlands band) Elegy, a band from the Netherlands
• December Elegy, Tristania
• Elegi, Lars Winnerbäck
• An American Elegy, Frank Ticheli
• Even Braver, Even Stronger (An American Elegy), Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band
• Elegy, "Vampire Elegy" by Solitary Harmony
• Elegy, Frail Words Collapse, As I Lay Dying
• Élégie, Gabriel Fauré
• Élégie, Sergei Rachmaninoff
• Élégie, in memory of Dennis Brain, Poulenc
• Elegia from the Adiemus Project, Karl Jenkins
• Elegy, Jethro Tull
• Elegy, Leaves' Eyes
• Elegia, New Order Low-Life, 1985
• Fire and Rain, James Taylor
• For A Dancer, Jackson Browne
• Goodbye My Lover, James Blunt
• Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, Charles Mingus
• I'll Be Missing You, Puff Daddy f/112, Faith Evans from Album: No Way Out/Tribute to Notorious B.I.G. EP
• Aika (Elegy) (哀歌 (エレジー), Ken Hirai
• Elegy, Inspection 12
• "Elegy," Terminate Damnation, Becoming the Archetype
• Elegy, Machine Head
• Elegy for Elsabet, The Weakerthans
• Elegy for Gump Worsley, The Weakerthans
• Lacrimosa, Regina Spektor
• Mort tu as navré de ton dart, Johannes Ockeghem on the death of Gilles Binchois
• Nymphes des bois, Josquin des Prez on the death of Johannes Ockeghem
• Red (Elegy), Dave Carter
• Ye Sacred Muses, William Byrd on the death of Thomas Tallis

Elegy in Painting:

• Elegy to the Spanish Republic, Robert Motherwell
• Elegía, William Adolphe Bouguereau

Further reading

Cavitch, Max (2007). American Elegy: The Poetry of Mourning from the Puritans to Whitman. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 081664893X. 

Ramazani, Jahan (1994). Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy fom Hardy to Heaney. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226703401. 

Sacks, Peter (1987). The English Elegy: Studies in the Genre from Spenser to Yeats. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0801834716. 

See also

• elegiac couplet
• Elegy, album by John Zorn
• Elegy, album by Amorphis
• Elegy, album by The Nice
• Elegy, album by Julian Lloyd Webberbs:Elegija

br:Klemmgan bg:Елегия cs:Elegie da:Elegi de:Elegie es:Elegía eo:Elegio fr:Élégie gl:Elexía hr:Elegija ia:Elegia it:Elegia ka:ელეგია (პოეზია) la:Elegia lv:Elēģija hu:Elégia nl:Elegie ja:エレジー no:Elegi pl:Elegia pt:Elegia ro:Elegie ru:Элегия (литература) sq:Elegjia sk:Elégia sr:Елегија fi:Elegia sv:Elegi tr:Ağıt uk:Елегія