Pastoral elegy Shelley's "Adonaïs" is a pastoral elegy written by Shelley immediately after hearing about the death of John Keats. The elegy is 495 lines long, consisting of a total of 55 Spenserian stanzas. "Adonaïs" was composed during the spring of 1821 and was eventually published in July 1821. Studying the works of many classical pastoral elegies himself, Shelley admired Milton's poetic voice and form in "Lycidas". Thus, Shelley composed "Adonaïs" specifically in the tradition of Milton's "Lycidas" Introduced to each other by their mutual friend Leigh Hunt in late 1816, Shelley and Keats often exchanged letters of advice about their works
Pastoral elegy of elegies In classic literature, an elegy was simply any poem written in elegiac meter and was not restricted by its subject. Elegiac meter was considered alternating lines of dactylic hexameter and pentameter. Most classical elegies were actually love poems, not laments. In English literature since the 16th century CE, the elegy has come to mean specifically a poem of lamentation. Additionally, it may be written in any meter the poet chooses. Key poets who shaped the genre After Theocritus' first idyll (early 3rd century BCE), the earliest Greek pastoral elegy is Bion of Smyrna's poem lamenting the death of