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
The Death of a Soldier unpredictable. One is always writing about two things at the same time in poetry and it is this that produces the tension characteristic of poetry. One is the true subject and the other is the poetry of the subject. Then Lemercier's death would be the true subject, and the poetry of the subject would be anyone's death. "The Death of a Soldier" and other works by Stevens lead Bates to describe Stevens as "a war poet, after his fashion", and Ramazani's "Stevens and the War Elegy" expands on that idea, especially as it relates to post-"Harmonium" poems that are informed