Like Shelley's "Adonais"

• Expressing poetic sorrow for something past
• Mournful English cricket side, by one account
• Plaintive verse
• Wistfully mournful
• Like funeral dirges
• Expressing sorrow

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Word definitions in Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
adjective EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES ▪ elegiac verse EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS ▪ Both catch the film's elegiac mood, bathed in southern sunshine but overhung with impending death. ▪ Chahine Yavroyan's sound-design is a mosaic of distant gunfire, creaking hulks ...

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary Word definitions in Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1580s, in reference to lines of verse of a particular construction, from Middle French élégiaque , from Latin elegiacus , from Greek elegeiakos , from eleigeia (see elegy ). In ancient Greece the verse form was used especially with mournful music. Meaning ...

Wikipedia Word definitions in Wikipedia
The adjective elegiac has two possible meanings. First, it can refer to something of, relating to, or involving, an elegy or something that expresses similar mournfulness or sorrow. Second, it can refer more specifically to poetry composed in the form of ...

WordNet Word definitions in WordNet
adj. resembling or characteristic of or appropriate to an elegy; "an elegiac poem on a friend's death" expressing sorrow often for something past; "an elegiac lament for youthful ideals"