Elegy

(el'e-je.) [FromGr. e, alas, and lego, I say.] (Poet.) A short poem of a plaintive and mournful character, written usually in apostrophe of some person's death. Among the Greeks the chief elegiac writers were Call i mach us, Euphorion, and Par then i us; among the Latins, Cutullus, Ovid, Pro pert i us, and Tibullus. The finest E. in the English language is Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard. [s. 324]