What Is an Elegy? | Definition & Examples
- Melchior Antoine
- Jul 3
- 10 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
An elegy, unlike a eulogy, doesn’t have to mourn the death of a specific person. Instead, it is a poem that centers the emotion of mourning itself. In other words, an elegy is the emotion of mourning expressed in the form of a poem or song.
This means one can write an elegy about the loss of any event, person, place, or thing that inspires mourning or grief. It is an ancient art form. A good example of an ancient elegy is from the Old Testament Bible: Psalm 137 (NIV) from the Book of Psalms:
1 By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
2 There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
3 for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”
4 How can we sing the songs of the Lord
while in a foreign land?
5 If I forget you, Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill.
6 May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem
my highest joy.
7 Remember, Lord, what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
“Tear it down,” they cried,
“tear it down to its foundations!”
8 Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction,
happy is the one who repays you
according to what you have done to us.
9 Happy is the one who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
The poem was written by Jewish captives from the Kingdom of Judah after Nebuchadnezzar II's successful siege of Jerusalem around 597 BC. They were deported to Babylon, where they were held captive until around the Fall of Babylon (circa 539 BC).
Psalm 137 is an elegy expressing the loss of one’s home and even kingdomhood or nationhood, if this word could even be used in ancient contexts. The psalm relies heavily on the literary device of irony — namely, captors requiring songs and entertainment from people whom they have kidnapped. In their own words, “our tormentors demanded songs of joy.”
The song has a double irony, as while the captives point out the cruelty of their captors asking them to sing songs while in captivity, they themselves are making a song telling of this bad treatment. They resent this demand so much that the final stanza of the psalm ends with a curse, asking for the infants of their captives to be dashed "against the rocks."
Yet despite this resentment, the poem is a song, which would have been set to music and one would imagine festive dancing. This irony reveals one of the main purposes of an elegy — cathartic relief from the pain of loss while expressing that very loss through mourning.
In this article, we look at a number of examples of elegies, which do just that: using poetry and song as a cathartic release from the pain of grief and loss. In doing so, we look at Kamau Brathwaite’s “Kumina” and “Rivers of Babylon” (1970), a song inspired by Psalm 137.
1. Kamau Brathwaite, “Kumina”: An Afro-Caribbean elegy
Kamau Brathwaite’s "Kumina" (published in 2005) is an excellent example of the cathartic usage of an elegy. We discussed it already in Tone & Mood in Literature. However, it won’t hurt to revisit it here.
In the case of Psalm 137, we see the loss of a nation or a homeland being mourned. It is something communal, and not private, unlike the death of a loved one.
In Kumina, Brathwaite describes a communal or public ritual that serves a private purpose. A Jamaican mother has lost a son through a tragic car accident through the careless driving of a reckless driver. She resorts to Kumina, An Afro-Caribbean ritual of Congo origin that allows communication with spirits of the dead.
The ritual occurs over a period of 21 days until the grieving mother is contacted by the spirit of her dead son and finally consoled. She goes through all the various moods of grief, ranging from devastating silence on the day she learns of her son’s death, the frantic madness of grieving, and finally making peace with his death. The day of her son, Mark’s death is described as follows:
on the first day
of yr death it is quiet it is dormant like a doormat
no one-foot touch its welcome. its dust on the floor
is not disturb nor are the sleeping spirits of this house
This aptly describes the quiet and devastating shock of learning that someone you love has died suddenly. In short, she has been stunned into silence or “dormant like a doormat.” The seventh day of the ritual is described in the following way:
on the seventh day
after yr death. . . .
i am unhappy like the wind & tides are restless rivers
i can’t find you. i can’t find you. i cannot cannot cannot be console to dreams.
This describes a state of frantic despair. The mother cannot commune with the spirit or soul of her deceased son and has gone into full panic mode. This panic is expressed in simple repetition, such as epimone. The mom finally finds some relief on Day 9 when the spirit of her son apparently visits her:
on the nine/ff night
yu rise again from off the dead
i see you now & at the hour of yr o not soff not soffly dead
it is my pain it is my privilege. it is my own torn flesh torn fresh
o let me comfort us my chile. is not yr heart is broken
The act of catharsis is portrayed as a woman trying to heal from a physical wound likened to a kind of reverse birth. Just as giving birth is a pain that leads to joy, losing a loved one is a pain that births new depths of despair and brokenness. This is powerfully realized in the phrase “it is my own torn flesh torn fresh.”
Women heal from the wounds and injuries of childbirth, unlike the death of a child, which is a pain from which there is likely no complete healing. Also, the phrase “is not your heart is broken” is worth paying attention to.
It is Jamaican dialect for “It’s not your heart that is broken.” Instead, it is the mother’s heart that is in pain. This emphasizes how the dead, wherever they are, are free from the suffering of loss and mourning and that it is the loved ones that they leave behind who are left to grieve.
2. Ben Johnson, “On My First Son”
Our next example of an elegy is another parent mourning the death of a child. This time it’s a sonnet written by Ben Johnson mourning the loss of his seven-year old son. The poem is “On My First Son” (published in 1616):
Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy;
My sin was too much hope of thee, lov'd boy.
Seven years tho' wert lent to me, and I thee pay,
Exacted by thy fate, on the just day.
O, could I lose all father now! For why
Will man lament the state he should envy?
To have so soon 'scap'd world's and flesh's rage,
And if no other misery, yet age?
Rest in soft peace, and, ask'd, say, "Here doth lie
Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry."
For whose sake henceforth all his vows be such,
As what he loves may never like too much.
The poem differs markedly from Kamau Brathwaite’s “Kumina.” The grief and mourning in Kumina is more raw, recent, and emotional. In the case of “On My First Son,” the expression of grief suggests distance between the event and feeling. The mourning is more subdued, mellow, and cerebral. Perhaps the difference says something about the differences in culture between the Afro-Jamaican culture featured in Kumina and the English culture represented by Ben Johnson. More importantly, it may even highlight gender-based differences to mourning.
The poet applies literary logic to the loss of his son. He describes his son as “his best piece of poetry” (Line 12). Also, he tries to comfort himself about the loss by focusing on the fact that his son in dying young has escaped the “world's and flesh's rage / And if no other misery, yet age.” In short, the elegy represents a man trying to reason or console himself out of grief.
3. Whitman, “O Captain! My Captain!”
Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” (published in 1865) is a famous elegy written shortly after the assassination of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln:
O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
There’s a thin line between an ode and an elegy, although the two might appear to be polar opposites of each other. This can be seen in Whitman’s poem. The poem is part ode and part elegy. It relies on an analogy and the tragic paradox of Abraham Lincoln.
Lincoln is portrayed as a captain who has successfully navigated the ship of America through perilous waters. However, the captain has “fallen cold and dead” on the deck of the ship, just as it reaches the harbor safely. The perilous waters in question would be the American Civil War, which Lincoln successfully fought and won, preventing the U.S. from being split into two countries. Nonetheless, President Lincoln was assassinated five days after the war was won.
Unlike Ben Johnson’s and Brathwaite’s poems, Whitman’s elegy represents mourning on behalf of a whole country. Abraham Lincoln was a beloved political figure, and the poem can be seen as more or less a ritual of collective mourning. The tragic paradox of Lincoln is dramatized in the private person or persona mourning his dead body on the ship's deck, while the public celebrates the ship making port, with "the people all exulting," oblivious to his death.
4. Milton, Sonnet 23
Milton’s Sonnet 23 (published in 1673) serves simultaneously as an elegy, a traditional Petrarchan love sonnet, and even an ode. The poem was written to mourn the death of Milton’s wife, who died in childbirth. The poet dreams of his wife visiting him as in a vision:
Methought I saw my late espoused Saint
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,
Whom Jove's great son to her glad Husband gave,
Rescu'd from death by force though pale and faint.
Mine as whom washt from spot of child-bed taint,
Purification in the old Law did save,
And such, as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was vail'd, yet to my fancied sight,
Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person shin'd
So clear, as in no face with more delight.
But O as to embrace me she enclin'd,
I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.
The poet relies heavily on mixed allusions that reference both Biblical and classical associations. His wife is described as “my late espoused Saint” (a Christian reference) and is also compared to the Greek figure Alcestis. Alcestis is a figure from Greek mythology who was famous for selflessly giving up her life in place of her husband’s. She was later rescued from Hell by the Greek hero Hercules (Jove's great son) after he defeated Hades in a wrestling match.
The poem is triply tragic. Milton mourns the death of his wife in childbirth, the child who died as a result of the childbirth, and his eyesight, as the poet at that time went completely blind. The poem combines the depth of emotion reminiscent of Brathwaite’s poem with the logic we find in Ben Johnson’s sonnet.
Milton is confident in his belief and faith as a Christian that he will eventually reunite with his wife, or as he puts it, have “full sight of her in Heaven without restraint.” However, he fully acknowledges the present pain of his tragedy and loss, eloquently portraying it in the conventions of Greek tragedy.
For example, he describes the pitiful and beautiful image of his wife fleeing as she tries to hug him. Heroes failing to embrace the ghosts of their dearly departed is a common theme in Greek epics such as Homer’s Odyssey. The elegy here goes beyond the cathartic. It represents a man trying to make meaning out of an intense moment of grief, loss, and despair.
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5. The Melodians, “Rivers of Babylon”
We began with Psalm 137, and we will end with an interpretation of that psalm in the form of a modern song — the Meoldians, “Rivers of Babylon” (released in 1970). Here are the lyrics of the song:
By the rivers of Babylon
Where he sat down
And there he wept
When he remember Zion
'Cause di wicked carried us away captivity
Require from us a song
How can we sing King Alpha's song in a strange land?
'Cause di wicked carried us away captivity
Require from us a song
How can we sing King Alpha's song in a strange land?
(Sing it out loud!)
One of my favorite versions of the song is by Boney M. (1979), which is highly entertaining even if a little farcical:
The song is a great example of cultural appropriation. It was written by members of the Rastafarian movement in Jamaica, who recognized in the exile of Jewish captives their own circumstances. They were the descendants of African slaves taken from Africa and living in the Americas, and yearned to return to Africa or to their idealized vision of Africa.
Most of the other elegies that we included had a tone and mood of sadness. However, this song seems rather happy. Does it even qualify to be an elegy? Well, the original Psalm 137 would most likely have been set to music and song and may have been just as festive. One could go so far as to say that the Babylonians requesting their Judah captives to "Sing us one of the songs of Zion" was based on the reputation that Judah had for their festive songs of worship.
So, this doesn't necessarily disqualify the song from being part of an elegiac tradition. And as we mentioned earlier, an elegy is supposed to be cathartic. It means finding relief from loss and grief through the expression of said loss through mourning. It also helps that what is being mourned here is not an individual, but an abstracted sense of being historically uprooted and lost, which is centuries old.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2025, July 03). What Is an Elegy? | Definition & Examples. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/what-is-an-elegy |
