"A Small Elegy" The title of this specific piece of poetry is "A Small Elegy". Now, this title does not really give a reader much to go on. The only thing one would know about this poem is that it is a small one and that it may be about a deceased person or someone who new someone who dies. I say this because elegy is derived from the Latin elegia , which means; A poem or song composed especially as a lament for a deceased person. From the beginning, "A Small Elegy" dramatically establishes that the speaker a stand-in for the poet, is by himself talking to himself. He was with other people, but now he is completely alone--his friends gone, his beloved sleeping elsewhere, unconsc