elegy; funeral song
A poem or song of mourning, often for a funeral or in memory of the dead. Can be used both literally and in literary titles.
Mourning his death, a friend composed an elegy.
The poetry collection contains several beautiful elegies.
レクイエム is a loanword from Latin 'requiem', often used for a musical mass for the dead, whereas 挽歌 is a native Japanese/Chinese term for a poetic elegy.
Standard kanji form; common in news and literary contexts.
Rarely used kanji form; the first character is a variant of 挽.
From Chinese 輓歌／挽歌 (wǎngē), literally 'pulling song', referring to songs sung while pulling a funeral hearse. The kanji 挽 means 'to pull' or 'to draw'.