Plaintive; melancholy

• Like Berg's "Violin Concerto"
• Like some of Thomas Gray's poetry
• Plaintive, as a poem
• Expressing poetic sorrow for something past
• Like Shelley's "Adonais"
• Plaintive verse

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"

Wiktionary Word definitions in Wiktionary
a. 1 Of, or relating to an elegy. 2 Expressing sorrow or mourning. n. A poem composed in the couplet style of classical elegy: a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of dactylic pentameter

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 ...