Elegy

The term "elegy" was originally used for a type of poetic meter (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.

Literary elegies

*Propertius' "Elegies" (author lived ca. 50 BCE – ca. 15 BCE)
*Jan Kochanowski's "Laments" (1580)
*Chidiock Tichborne's "Elegy" (1586)
*Edmund Spenser's "Astrophel" (1595)
*Ben Jonson's "On My First Sonne" (1616)
*John Milton's "Lycidas" (1637)
*Thomas Gray's [http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard"] (1750)
*Charlotte Turner Smith's "Elegiac Poems" (1784)
*William Cullen Bryant's "Thanatopsis" (1817)
*Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Adonaïs" (1821)
*Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Marienbad Elegy" (1823)
*Evgeny Baratynsky's "Autumn" (1837)
*Alfred Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H." (1849)
*Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" (1865)
*Louis Gallet's "Elégie" (author lived 1835–98)
*William Butler Yeats's "Easter 1916" (1916)
*Rainer Maria Rilke's "Duino Elegies" (1922)
*Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" (1927)
*Kamau Brathwaite's "Kumina" (author born 1930)

Musical elegies

*"Aika (Elegy)", Ken Hirai
*"Death Hath Deprived Me", Thomas Weelkes on the death of Thomas Morley
*"December Elegy", Tristania
*"Elegia from the Adiemus Project", Karl Jenkins
*"Élégie, in memory of Dennis Brain", Poulenc
*"Élégie", Gabriel Fauré
*"Élégie, Op. 3, No. 1", Sergei Rachmaninoff
*"Élégie", ballet by George Balanchine to Igor Stravinsky's eponymous solo for viola
*"Elegies for Angels, Punks and Raging Queens"
*"Elegy", Lacuna Coil
*"Elegy", Leaves' Eyes
*"Elegy for Elsabet", The Weakerthans
*"Elegy for Gump Worsley", The Weakerthans
*"Elegy, for orchestra", John Corigliano
*"Fire and Rain", James Taylor
*"For A Dancer", Jackson Browne
*"Goodbye My Lover", James Blunt
*"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", Charles Mingus
*"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
*"Elegy", Jethro Tull
*"Tol'ko On Ne Vernulsya iz Boya (But He Didn't Return from Battle)", Vladimir Vysotsky
*"Ye Sacred Muses", William Byrd on the death of Thomas Tallis
*"An American Elegy", Frank Ticheli
*"Elegi", Lars Winnerbäck
*"Elégie", Jules Massenet, based on the text by Louis Gallet
*"Élégie", Movement 3, Serenade, Tchaikovsky
*"Elegy", Frail Words Collapse, As I Lay Dying
*"Elegy", Inspection 12
*"Even Braver, Even Stronger (An American Elegy)", Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band
*"Red (Elegy)", Dave Carter
*"God's Son", Nas
*"Elegy in D", (for Contrabass), Giovanni Bottesinielegy for simon corl, botanist

Elegy in Painting

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

Elegy in Films

*Elegy (film) is a 2008 drama directed by Spanish director Isabel Coixet and based on a Phillip Roth novel, The Dying Animal.

Further reading

cite book
last = Cavitch
first = Max
title = American Elegy: The Poetry of Mourning from the Puritans to Whitman
publisher = University of Minnesota Press
date = 2007
isbn = 081664893X

cite book
last = Ramazani
first = Jahan
title = Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy fom Hardy to Heaney
publisher = University of Chicago Press
date = 1994
isbn = 0226703401

cite book
last = Sacks
middle = M.
first = Peter
title = The English Elegy: Studies in the Genre from Spenser to Yeats
publisher = Johns Hopkins University Press
date = 1987
isbn = 0801834716