An elegy is a sad poem or song, most often written for someone who has died — grief turned into art. People also write elegies for a lost time or a lost place, not only for a person. It is a literature word, a little formal and old in feeling. At a funeral you are more likely to hear a eulogy, which is a speech that praises the person’s life. An elegy is usually a poem or a song, and the heart of it is sorrow, not a list of good deeds. You would not call a quick message an elegy; the word still carries a serious, artistic air. Though actually, in very old Greek poetry the name first marked a type of poem by its rhythm, and those poems were not always about death — but in English now, if someone says elegy, they almost always mean a lament.