ELEGIAC VERSE has commonly been adopted by German poets for their elegies, but by English poets never. Coleridge 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 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 mourn ful, meditative, and short without being ejaculatory. Thus Tenny son's In Memoriam is excluded by its length ; it may at best be treated as a collection of elegies. Wordsworth's Lucy is a dirge; this is too brief a burst of emotion to be styled an elegy.