Pastoral elegy
The pastoral elegy is a poem about both death and idyllic rural life. Often, the pastoral elegy features shepherds. The genre is actually a subgroup of pastoral poetry, as the elegy takes the pastoral elements and relates them to expressing the poet’s grief at a loss. This form of poetry has several key features, including the invocation of the Muse, expression of the shepherd’s, or poet’s, grief, praise of the deceased, a tirade against death, a detailing of the effects of this specific death upon nature, and eventually, the poet’s simultaneous acceptance of death’s inevitability and hope for immortality. Additional features sometimes found within pastoral elegies include a procession of mourners, satirical digressions about different topics stemming from the death, and symbolism through flowers, refrains, and rhetorical questions. The pastoral elegy is typically incredibly moving and in its most classic form, it concerns itself with simple, country figures. In ordinary pastoral poems, the shepherd is the poem’s main character. In pastoral elegies, the deceased is often recast as a shepherd, despite what his role may have been in life. Further, after being recast as a shepherd, the deceased is often surrounded by classical mythology figures, such as nymphs, fauns, etc.
Pastoral Elegy (hymn)
The Pastoral Elegy is a hymn from the "Old Missouri Harmony Songbook". The Town of Corydon, Indiana is named after a person in this hymn. The mournful, period song tells the tale of a young shepherd boy named Corydon who died.
Governor William Henry Harrison of the Indiana Territory would visit frequently the land the area that would become Corydon. He owned 400 acres (1.6 km2) in present day Harrison County, even the land on which the Corydon Capitol building was built on. According to the story, Governor Harrison was at the house of Edward Smith, a friend of his. Governor Harrison said, he was planning on establishing a town in the area, but he had no thought of a name to call it yet. Edward's daughter Jennie suggested the name "Corydon" after his favorite song that she sang to him whenever he visited there. He said, "I shall do so" and thus the Town of Corydon was born.
Words of the Pastoral Elegy (1st stanza):
"What sorrowful sounds do I hear,
Move slowly along in the gale,
How solemn they fall on my ear,
As softly they pass through the vale.
Sweet Corydon's notes are all o'er,
Now lonely he sleeps in the clay,
His cheeks bloom with roses no more,
Since death called his spirit away."
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