Pastoral elegy condition of death, not just the death of a single individual. John Milton’s "Lycidas," considered the most famous pastoral elegy, mourns the death of the poet’s good friend Edward King. In the 17th century, John Donne, a contemporary of Milton’s, explored the genre further and addressed matters of human love, which to his metaphysically inclined mind often resembled death. In the English language some of the greatest pastoral elegies are "Adonaïs" by Percy Bysshe Shelley, which mourns the death of poet John Keats, and "Thyrsis" by Matthew Arnold, which mourns the poet Arthur Hugh Clough. In 17th century England, Andrew
An Oxford Elegy friend and fellow-composer Gustav Holst, and noted its aesthetic affinity with "Flos Campi". A typical performance usually lasts 20–25 minutes. An Oxford Elegy An Oxford Elegy is a work for narrator, small mixed chorus and small orchestra, written by Ralph Vaughan Williams between 1947 and 1949. It uses portions of two poems by Matthew Arnold, "The Scholar Gipsy" and "Thyrsis". The first performance took place privately, whilst the public premiere took place in Oxford in June 1952, with Steuart Wilson as the speaker and Bernard Rose conductor. All his life, Vaughan Williams wanted to create an opera from Arnold's "Scholar