Like funeral dirges

• Plaintive; melancholy
• Mournful
• Plaintive, as a poem
• Wistfully mournful
• Like a mournful poem

Wikipedia Word definitions in Wikipedia
The adjective elegiac has two possible meanings. First, it can refer to something of, relating to, or involving, an elegy or something that expresses similar mournfulness or sorrow. Second, it can refer more specifically to poetry composed in the form of ...

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

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 ...

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; ...