Inevitably, there is an elegiac quality to Wolfe's images - particularly those of mountain gorillas and other species hovering near extinction.

There's an elegiac quality to writing about old and mostly familiar works, and Harvey's style lacks the fire that comes from discovering something new.

"There is an elegiac quality to the evening," said the actress Mercedes Ruehl, who looked to be a relative youth in this company.

But they have an elegiac quality, a longing less for what once was than for what might still be.

As for the names of the railroad companies, or ex-companies, they now have an elegiac quality.

Her work had an elegiac quality, a certain contemplative quietude.

But despite his good intentions, there is a wistful, elegiac quality to this book that does not translate easily into hard policy recommendations.

But it's long, strange, full of lush description that gives the whole thing a haunting and elegiac quality.

A certain elan seems missing as the letters take on a sardonic and sometimes elegiac quality.

You would expect a memoir written in such circumstances to have an elegiac quality, but here there is no dying fall.