An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics.

It usually depicts rural life, rural life as free from the complexity and corruption of more civilized life.

The term was pertained metaphorically to short writings in any genre, including parts of a poetic sequence or poetry book. 

The combination of Virgil's influence and the persistence of pastoral poetry through the Renaissance imposed "eclogues" as the accepted term for the genre. 

The first English language eclogues were written by Alexander Barclay, in 1514.

 In English literature, Edmund Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender (1579) also belongs to the genre. 

Alexander Pope produced a series of four eclogues in imitation of Virgil in 1709.