Expressing poetic sorrow for something past

• Plaintive verse
• Like some of Thomas Gray's poetry
• Wistfully mournful
• Plaintive, as a poem
• Like a Thomas Gray work
• Like a mournful poem
• Legacies largely corrupt - sad
• Like Berg's "Violin Concerto"

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"