Sadness and Melancholy

The long sobs Of the violins Of autumn Pierce my heart With monotonous languor. 1

And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.

Never glad confident morning again!

All my joys to this are folly,

I hurry to laugh at everything, for fear of having to weep at it.

… Nessun maggior dolore,

I don’t consider myself a pessimist. I think of a pessimist as someone who is waiting for it to rain. And I feel soaked to the skin.

When lovely woman stoops to folly and

Still falls the Rain—

I measure every Grief I meet With narrow, probing, eyes— I wonder if It weighs like Mine— Or has an Easier size.

Slowly consumed, like fire down a candle; Forever flowing, like a passing river. Now, morning, I face my lone shadow: Suddenly my eyes are bleared with tears. 1

 

Lord save us all from a hope tree that has lost the faculty of putting out blossoms.

She wolde wepe, if that she saugh a mous Kaught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde.

To weep is to make less the depth of grief.

As is my grief, or lesser than my name, Or that I could forget what I have been, Or not remember what I must be now.

Yet the first bringer of unwelcome news Hath but a losing office, and his tongue Sounds ever after as a sullen bell, Remember’d knolling a departing friend.

Hail divinest Melancholy.

Now warm in love, now with’ring in my bloom, Lost in a convent’s solitary gloom!

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth A youth to fortune and to fame unknown. Fair Science frown’d not on his humble birth, And Melancholy mark’d him for her own.

To make delicious moan Upon the midnight hours.

I will not mourn, although my heart is torn, Oh, love forever lost! I will not mourn.

How sad and bad and mad it was—

The dead level of provincial existence.

Self-pity in its early stage is as snug as a feather mattress. Only when it hardens does it become uncomfortable.