Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Little Masterpieces of English Poetry, Vol. 6: Elegies and Hymns
In the usage of the people, however, the word has taken a different course. It does not include the poetry of regret for fugitive pleasure or un requited love, nor all the forms of verse in which the poet, to follow Coleridge's phrase, treats of his subject always and exclusively with reference to himself. These are classed with the pure lyrics, or with re?ective verse. But an elegy, in common parlance, has come to mean a poem dealing with the thought or the fact of death. It is not an outward, metrical shape: it is an in ward, spiritual form. It is the poetic utterance of the heart of man when he faces the sorrow of mortality. It is the voice in which he answers death and calls after the departed. It is the music with which he at once expresses and soothes the grief of the last farewell, pays tribute to vanished goodness and the memory of noble names, and encourages his own spirit to meet the end that comes to all, with fortitude and an equal mind.
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