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
Pastoral elegy poets, especially through Edmund Spenser's “The Shepherd’s Calendar,” which was published in 1579. One of the most famous examples of pastoral poetry is John Milton's “Lycidas.” Written in 1637, the poem is written about Edward King, a fellow student of Milton's who had died. History of pastoral poetry Pastoral elegy, a subcategory of the elegy form of poetry, has its roots in Hellenistic Greek poetry of the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. Pastoral poetry itself, which deals heavily with shepherds and other forms of rustic life, dates back to the 3rd century BC when Theocritus, a Greek poet, wrote his