Plenty of poets wrote them, but the most famous of all is John Milton's  Lycidas . Like all typical pastoral elegies, Milton mourns the loss of his best bud (who died in a shipwreck). But he also compares him to a shepherd and describes the ways in which nature mourns his loss, too.
The Banff longnose dace, a small minnow, was recently declared extinct. It failed to compete with the guppies, swordtails, sailfin mollies and other tropical fish that had been released in the warm marsh below the famous hot springs by tourists and national park officials.
Indeed, the last known Eskimo Curlew was shot by a hunter in Barbados. This year, scientists concluded that the Northern Darwin's Frog (Rhinoderma rufum), known only from Chile, is extinct. Closely related to the Southern Darwin's Frog (Rhinoderma darwinii), it was only recognized as a distinct species in 1975.