In traditional English poetry, it is often a melancholy poem that laments its subject’s death but ends in consolation. Examples include John Milton’s “Lycidas”; Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “In Memoriam”; [..]

An elegy (= French: élégie) is a lament, either vocal or instrumental.

1510s, from Middle French elegie, from Latin elegia, from Greek elegeia ode "an elegaic song," from elegeia, fem. of elegeios "elegaic," from elegos "poem or song of lament,&q [..]

An instrumental lament with praise for the dead.

In classical Greco-Roman literature, "elegy" refers to any poem written in elegiac meter (alternating hexameter and pentameter lines). More broadly, elegy came to mean any poem deali [..]

A poem which laments the death of someone.

n. A lyric poem lamenting the dead.

The elegy, a type of lyric poem, is usually a formal lament for someone's death. The term elegy is sometimes used more widely. In antiquity it referred to anything written in elegiac meter, which [..]

A lyric poem

(1) since the Renaissance, usually a formal lament on the death of a particular person, but focusing mainly on the speaker’s efforts to come to terms with his or her grief; (2) more broadly, any lyric [..]

Originally in Greece a funeral ovation written in couplets of hexameter followed by a pentameter, the word ‘elegy ’ was later applied by Ovid to describe love poems such as his Amores. Donne’s elegies followed Ovid and were sometimes witty and ribald. Generally the term elegy signified a meditation on love inflected with [..]

A poem which mourns the death of someone. For the entry on elegy in the University of Victoria's electronic list of Literary and Rhetorical Terms, click here.

A poem written to commemorate the death of a person who played a significant role in the poet’s life.

A poem, usually written as a formal lament on the death of a person. In classical time an elegy was any poem written in elegiac meter. Example: “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” by W.H. Auden.

In classical literature, a lyric poem composed in couplets of alternating hexameter and pentameter lines, a form known as elegiac meter. In English literature through the 17th century, a song or poem [..]

Poem written to lament the dead e.g. Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray. Such a poem would employ a mournful or elegiac tone. Other examples of elegy include: Lycidas by Milton, [..]

(n) a mournful poem; a lament for the dead

a mode of poetry originally limited to funeral verses remembering the dead, now applied loosely to any regretful memory of things passed (e.g., "an elegy for the Orioles' pennant hopes,& [..]

A mournful or plaintive poem; a funeral song; a poem of lamentation.

An elegy is a poem about a dead person or thing. Uplifting, right?Whenever you see a poem with the title, "In Memory of… ", for example, you're probably reading an elegy. Kind of like t [..]