Expressing sorrow

• Wistfully mournful
• Like a mournful poem
• Plaintive, as a poem
• Melancholy
• Like Berg's "Violin Concerto"
• Plaintive verse
• Plaintive; melancholy
• Mournful English cricket side, by one account

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 ...