Sadness and Melancholy

Hail divinest Melancholy.

Hence vain deluding Joys, The brood of Folly without father bred!

Hence, loathed Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn, ’Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy.

Grief melts away Like snow in May, As if there were no such cold thing.

All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as melancholy.

Oh, I could still (Like melting snow upon some craggy hill) Drop, drop, drop, drop, Since nature’s pride is, now, a wither’d daffodil.

I’ll queen it no inch further, But milk my ewes and weep.

Jog on, jog on, the footpath way, And merrily hent the stile-a: A merry heart goes all the day, Your sad tires in a mile-a.

A sad tale’s best for winter. I have one of sprites and goblins.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear times’ waste.

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries.

Music to hear, why hear’st thou music sadly? Sweets with sweet war not, joy delights in joy.

The sad companion, dull-ey’d melancholy.

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.

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.

The poor soul sat sighing by a sycamore tree, Sing all a green willow; Her hand on her bosom, her head on her knee, Sing willow, willow, willow. 44

But, alas! to make me A fixed figure for the time of scorn To point his slow and moving finger at.

Duke: And what’s her history? Viola: A blank, my lord. She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud, Feed on her damask cheek: she pin’d in thought, And with a green and yellow melancholy, She sat like Patience on a monument, Smiling at grief.

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, But in battalions. 36

A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

It is not nor it cannot come to good.

Like Niobe, all tears.

Things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely. That it should come to this!

Seems, madam! Nay, it is; I know not “seems.” ’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black.