Elegies & Laments

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