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.
With that said, here are 5 animals that have gone extinct in the past 50 years: Baiji River Dolphin. Owing to protocol, the Baiji River Dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer) has yet to actually be declared as being extinct â but, for all intents and purposes, the animal species is now long gone.