oups; on the other it may take the form of sonnets, many of which
answer every requirement of the dirge. Many poems are therefore
elegiacal that are not strictly elegies. A rigid classification is never
necessary, but an association of these beautiful pieces, all thoroughly
impregnated with the personal grief of the author, gives to each a
greater power, a more thrilling significance. They arise from the
deepest emotion and so are the offspring of divinest inspiration; love
is in the heart of the writer and so the flight of song is best
sustained; they are intended to show to the world respect and admiration
for the one whose virtues they celebrate and so they are refined and
polished to the last degree. Where grief, love and a hope to give
earthly immortality to the object of his affection move the poet, we
expect the finest efforts of his genius. These elegies include some of
the grandest, the most perfect productions of poetic skill.

When man sees his loved one laid away forever, he naturally longs to
preserve the memory of the departed to succeeding generations, to erect
some permanent memorial. Funereal monuments are characteristic of every
race and have proved the most enduring records of the past. The
inscriptions upon these tombs are early records of the elegiac spirit.

The epitaph is elegy in miniature. "To define an epitaph is useless;
everyone knows it is an inscription on a tomb. An _epitaph_ is indeed
commonly panegyrical, because we are seldom distinguished by a stone but
by our friends," says Dr. Johnson.

This epitaph was written by Robert Wilde in the seventeenth century:

Here lies a piece of Christ; a star in dust;
A vein of gold; a china dish that must
Be used in heaven, when God shall feast the just.

The _sonnet_ may be addressed to any person or thing and is the direct
personal expression of the author's feeling. It is like the ode, and
also partakes of the general nature of the elegy, but it differs from
both in the rigidity of the rules of form that govern it. Sonnets
originated in Italy, and the genuine Italian sonnet is very exacting in
form. It must consist of exactly fourteen lines of iambic pentameter.
These lines are divided into two groups, one of which consists of eight
lines or two _quatrains_, the whole known as the _octave_. The remaining
six lines constitute the _sestet_. The first and last line of each
quatrain rhyme together, while the middle lines of each form th