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ELEGIAC VERSE
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ELEGIAC VERSE has commonly been adopted by German poets for their elegies, but by English poets never. Schiller defines this kind of verse, which consists of a distich of which the first line is a hexameter and the second a pentameter, in the following pretty illustration: " In the hexameter-rises the fountain's silvery column, In the pentameter aye falling in melody back." The word " elegy," in English, is one which is frequently used very incorrectly; it should be remembered that it must be mournful, meditative and short without being ejaculatory. Thus Tennyson's In Memoriam is excluded by its length; it may at best be treated as a collection of elegies. Wordsworth's Lucy, on the other hand, is a dirge; this is too brief a burst of emotion to be styled an elegy. Lycidas and A donais remain the two unapproachable types of what a personal elegy ought to be in English. (E. G.)