Sadness and Melancholy

Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange. 1

 

Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucketof whitewash and a long-handled brush. Hesurveyed the fence, and all gladness left himand a deep melancholy settled down upon hisspirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feethigh. Life to him seemed hollow, and existencebut a burden.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

 

The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow.

O Solitude! where are the charms That sages have seen in thy face?

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine; His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

I weep for Adonais [John Keats] 4 —he is dead! Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!

And if I laugh at any mortal thing,

Winter is come and gone,

I weep for Adonais—he is dead!

The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy.

And alien tears will fill for him

The spirituals and the blues were not created out of sweet deceit. Spirituals and blues contain sublimated bitterness and humility, pathos and bewilderment.

I have liv’d long enough: my way of life Is fall’n into the sere, the yellow leaf; And that which should accompany old age, As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends, I must not look to have; but, in their stead, Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honor, breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not.

Oh name forever sad! forever dear! Still breath’d in sighs, still usher’d with a tear.

Sigh’d and look’d, and sigh’d again.

I cannot tell why this imagined Despair has fallen upon me; The ghost of an ancient legend That will not let me be.

O heart! O heart! if she’d but turn her head, You’d know the folly of being comforted.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind: Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.

Smiling through her tears.

Alas! that all we loved of him should be,

While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert it only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested , and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.

Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.

When we sing the blues, we’re singing out our hearts, we’re singing out our feelings. Maybe we’re hurt and just can’t answer back, then we sing or maybe even hum the blues.