Like funeral dirges

• Expressing sorrow
• Plaintive verse
• Like a mournful poem
• Melancholy
• Plaintive, as a poem
• Expressing poetic sorrow for something past
• Like a Thomas Gray work
• Wistfully mournful

The Collaborative International Dictionary Word definitions in The Collaborative International Dictionary
Elegiac \E*le"gi*ac\, n. Elegiac verse.

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 ...