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An elegy is a poem of serious reflection, and in English literature usually a lament for the dead. However, according to The Oxford Handbook of the Elegy, "for all of its pervasiveness ... the 'elegy' remains remarkably ill defined: sometimes used as a catch-all to denominate texts of a somber or pessimistic tone, sometimes as a marker for textual monumentalizing, and sometimes strictly as a ...
/ Still showed a quickness," but Dryden finds comfort in the fact that "maturing time / But mellows what we write to the dull sweets of rhyme." The poem is concluded with an echo of "the famous words that conclude Catullus's elegy to his brother: 'Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale' (And forever, brother, hail and farewell!)."
"Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady", also called "Verses to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady", is a poem in heroic couplets by Alexander Pope, first published in his Works of 1717. [1] Though only 82 lines long, it has become one of Pope's most celebrated pieces.
Holograph manuscript of Gray's "Stanzas Wrote in a Country Church-Yard". The poem most likely originated in the poetry that Gray composed in 1742. William Mason, in Memoirs, discussed his friend Gray and the origins of Elegy: "I am inclined to believe that the Elegy in a Country Church-yard was begun, if not concluded, at this time [August 1742] also: Though I am aware that as it stands at ...
However, in 1751, Thomas Gray wrote "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard". That poem inspired numerous imitators, and soon both the revived Pindaric ode and "elegy" were commonplace. Gray used the term elegy for a poem of solitude and mourning, and not just for funereal verse. He also freed the elegy from the classical elegiac meter.
The pastoral elegy is a poem about both death and idyllic rural life. Often, the pastoral elegy features shepherds. The genre is actually a subgroup of pastoral poetry, as the elegy takes the pastoral elements and relates them to expressing grief at a loss. This form of poetry has several key features, including the invocation of the Muse ...
The background to the poem's composition is not entirely clear. One suggestion is that Tennyson composed it while crossing the Solent from Aldworth to Farringford on the Isle of Wight, after suffering a serious illness; alternatively, that he wrote it on a yacht anchored in Salcombe, where there is a moaning sandbar.
Even though the poem is a mere nineteen lines there are many differing interpretations, not least because the poem contains several obscure words and some ambiguous grammar. [13] One interpreter considers that the word Eadwacer in the poem is not a proper noun, but a simple common noun which means "property watcher". [ 14 ]