An elegy is a poem of mourning written on the occasion of a death. Traditional English elegies tended to focus on a single, specific death. In “The Soldier,” the speaker imagines his own death during WWI, making the poem not just an elegy but a self-elegy.

More than most other types of poems, elegies imitate, reference, and relate to other elegies. As a result, to understand the literary context of Brooke’s poem, it is helpful to understand a little bit about the English elegiac tradition.

In what is widely considered the most important and influential English elegy, John Milton called back to a much earlier Greek tradition, where shepherds sat around in the countryside and lamented the death of one of their shepherd-friends but eventually found comfort and consolation for their loss (Milton, John. “Lycidas.” Poetry Foundation). Milton’s “Lycidas” established the pastoral tradition in English elegy, and Brooke’s poem also employs a pastoral setting.

Additionally, Milton and Brooke wrote their respective elegies at very similar times in their lives. Milton wrote “Lycidas” for Edward King, a classmate of his at Cambridge who drowned after the ship that was transporting him to Ireland sank.