Plaintive, as a poem

• Mournful
• Like Shelley's "Adonais"
• Like funeral dirges
• Plaintive verse
• Sad English stage actor denied rise to tour India

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 ...

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

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"

The Collaborative International Dictionary Word definitions in The Collaborative International Dictionary
Elegiac \E*le"gi*ac\ (?; 277), a. [L. elegiacus, Gr. ?: cf. F. Belonging to elegy, or written in elegiacs; plaintive; expressing sorrow or lamentation; as, an elegiac lay; elegiac strains. Elegiac griefs, and songs of love. --Mrs. Browning. Used in elegies; ...