Test Prep 2

Elegy- traditionally a long, serious poem describing a death or tragic occurrence. In modern poetry, it can be used for personal statements. It is key to know that it is not the same as a Eulogy, the words that are said in memorial at funerals, and why they both deal with loss, a Elegy deals with transition and the fact that almost everything in life is temporary. You can find them about people as well as objects.

 

Poem Examples

Marie Howe

This is it. Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss-we want more and more and then more of it.But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless: I am living. I remember you.

A.E. Houseman

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields were glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdHpsbsdSLI