Elegiac poems are always about loss and death. They usually begin with a consideration of a specific object, which soon reminds the speaker of a person who has recently died. The speaker will then shift to recounting memories of the deceased. An elegy can also be about the passing of something other than an individual, such as a way of life. In these kinds of elegies, the speaker will lament the loss of a simpler world, which is not replaced with a complex universe full of problems.
Elegies are often written in rhyming couplets, called elegiac couplets. However, they can also be written in elegiac stanzas, which are four lines that with an alternating rhyme of abab. These lines are always written in iambic pentameter, with five consecutive poetic feet consisting of an unstressed and a stressed syllable. A work of prose, such as a novel, might also loosely be considered an elegy if it is about the loss of a person or a way of life.
The pastoral elegy is probably the most common form of elegiac poem in the English language. It mourns the passing of an individual, but uses nature to express this loss. Typically, a pastoral elegy takes place in a natural setting, with the deceased represented as a shepherd. Nature feels the loss of the person, in a sense, and the poem ends with a renewal of hope, suggesting that death is also the beginning of life.
The best-known example of an elegy is Thomas Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," from 1751. The poem mourns the death of the common man in England, but suggests that we are equal in death, regardless of rank in life. Other famous elegies include Keats' "Ode to Melancholy" and Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed." Whitman's poem is an elegy to the recently deceased president, Abraham Lincoln.