elegy
(ˈɛlɪdʒɪ)
[ad. Fr. élégie, ad. L. elegīa, ad. Gr. ἐλεγεία, f. ἔλεγος a mournful poem.]
1. A song of lamentation, esp. a funeral song or lament for the dead.
| 1514 Barclay Cyt. & Uplondyshm. Introd. 69, I tell mine elegy. 1594 Drayton Idea 749 My Lives complaint in dolefull Elegies. 1649 Jer. Taylor Gt. Exemp. i. ix. 140 The Church's song is most of it Elegy. 1750 Gray Elegy xxi, Their name, their years..The place of fame and elegy supply. 1762 Goldsm. Nash 180 The public papers were filled with elegies. 1766 ― in Vic. W. xvii. (title) Elegy of a Mad Dog. 1812 Scott Rokeby v. xvii, Thy strings mine elegy shall thrill, My Harp alone. 1871 R. Ellis Catullus lxv. 12 Death's dark elegy. |
2. Vaguely used in wider sense, app. originally including all the species of poetry for which Gr. and Lat. poets adopted the elegiac metre. See also quots. 1755 and 1833.
| 1600 Shakes. A.Y.L. iii. ii. 379 There is a man..hangs..Elegies on brambles..defying the name of Rosalinde. 1716–8 Lady M. W. Montague Lett. I. xxxiv. 120 A subject affording many poetical turns..in an heroic elegy. 1755 Johnson, Elegy, a short poem without points or turns. a 1763 Shenstone Wks. & Lett. (1768) I. 17 They gave the name of elegy to their pleasantries as well as lamentations. 1833 Coleridge Table-T. 23 Oct., Elegy..may treat of any subject, but..of no subject for itself..always and exclusively with reference to the poet. 1859 Kingsley Burns Misc. I. 379 The poet descends from the..dramatic domain of song, into the subjective and reflective one of elegy. |
3. a. Poetry, or a poem, written in elegiac metre. † b. [after Gr. ἐλεγεῖον] An elegiac distich (obs.).
| 1589 Puttenham Eng. Poesie (Arb.) 64 Long lamentation in Elegie. 1794 T. Taylor Pausanias' Greece II. 369 An elegy on one of these bases..signifies that the statue..was that of Philopœmen. 1839 Thirlwall Greece II. 126 The elegy, which [Mimnermus] adopted as the organ of his voluptuous melancholy..had been invented by another Ionian poet, Callinus. 1862 Merivale Rom. Emp. (1871) V. xli. 124 Ovid was the successor in elegy of Propertius and Tibullus. |