Elegies & Laments: Poetic tributes to the dead

In these more modern time perhaps our first thoughts of an Elegy or a Lament is for someone’s passing. Wreathed in grief and death we think of a headstone on a silent grave and the memories that shelter within our hearts, slowly receding from one generation to the next, as an often lonely voice extols the virtues and traits of the one who has passed.
But these two very early forms of poetry, dating back to at least Ovid and probably further, are also surprising in their lyrical touch. These are not just mournful and sad but also whimsical or rich with celebration and tribute as they journey through joy, laughter, love, tears and comfort.

Our Classic Poets, who have specifically chosen to include the form in the title of their work, include the likes of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas Chatterton, Aphra Behn, Rainer Maria Rilke, Radclyffe Hall and many others of equal measure are always surprising in their views, their analysis and their sharing of words and thoughts, offering feelings that mirror our own and provide a balm of many hues for our wounded and tender souls.

1 - Elegies and Laments - An Introduction

2 - Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard by Thomas Gray

3 - The Lament of Swordy Well by John Clare

4 - An Elegy on a Pile of Ruins by John Cunningham

5 - Lament by Rainer Maria Rilke

6 - Elegy - Supposed to Be Written in Barnet Churchyard by George Townsend

7 - Elegy by Thomas Chatterton

8 - A Lament by Radclyffe Hall

9 - An Elegy by Ben Jonson

10 - Laeta - A Lament by HP Lovecraft

11 - Angellica's Lament by Aphra Behn

12 - Amores - Book I Elegy V - Corinna in an Afternoon by Ovid

13 - Morning Lament by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

14 - The Wind's Lament by John Morris-Jones

15 - Noon Day Elegiacs by T W Rolleston

16 - Midnight Lamentation by Harold Munro

17 - February. An Elegy by Thomas Chatterton

18 - Elegy in April and September by Wilfred Owen

19 - Elegy by Anna Seward

20 - Autumn Elegy by Leslie Norris

21 - Elegy on the Year 1788 by Robert Burns

22 - Elegy for an Enemy by Stephen Vincent Benet

23 - An Elegy on the Death of a Mad Dog by Oliver Goldsmith

24 - Pointless It Is To Lament by Narsinh Mehta

25 - To the Beloved Dead - A Lament by Alice Meynell

26 - The Slave's Lament by Benjamin Cutler Clark

27 - The Slaves Lament by Robert Burns

28 - A Lament by Katharine Tynan

29 - The Going of the Battery (Wives Lament November the 2nd 1899) by Thomas Hardy

30 - Lament in 1915 by Harold Munro

31 - An Elegy on the Death of Llywelyn ab Gruyffyd by Gruffydd ap Yr Ynad Coch

32 - Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady by Alexander Pope

33 - Elegy on a Lady Whom Grief for the Death of Her Bethrothed Killed by Robert Seymour Bridges

34 - Lament by Edna St Vincent Millay

35 - The Mother's Lament For Her Infant by Lucretia Maria Davidson

36 - Elegy on the Death of Mr Phillips by Thomas Chatterton

37 - Lament for the Poets, 1916 by Francis Ledwidge

38 - Lament for Thomas McDonagh by Francis Ledwidge

39 - Elegy on the Earl of Rochester by Anne Wharton

40 - Elegy on William Shakespeare by William Basse

41 - Adonais - An Elegy on the Death of John Keats by Percy Bysshe Shelley