Elegy

Elegy (perhaps from Greek e-e-legein, to cry Woe! woe!) originally implied a mournful poem; and then was used to signify a certain poetical measure consisting of couplets of alternate hexameters and pentameters, commonly known as elegiac. Coleridge gives an example of it thus: -

"In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column; In the pentameter aye falling in melody back."

It is possible that the connection between elegy and the idea of mournfulness arises from the fact that this metre was a favourite one for funeral inscriptions; but it was used also for joyous poems and for war songs. Everyone knows Gray's Elegy, and readers of Hood's comic poems will remember his line --

"And I've been singing his L-E-G."