Definition of "drear"

Earth raised up her headFrom the darkness dread and drear,

1794, William Blake, Earth's Answer, lines 1-2

I spoke, perplexed by something in the signsOf desolation I had seen and heardIn this drear pilgrimage to ruined shrines:

1874, James Thomson, The City of Dreadful Night

And over all, the dead silence of the dead, the sense of utter loneliness, and the brooding spirit of the Past! How beautiful it was, and yet how drear! We did not dare to speak aloud.

1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887

Now dreary dawns the eastern light,And fall of eve is drear, [...]

1922, A. E. Housman, Last Poems, XXVIII, lines 1-2

She thankt him deare / Both for that newes he did to her impart, / And for the courteous care which he did beare / Both to her love and to her selfe in that sad dreare.

1596, Edmund Spenser, “Book VI, Canto II”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie