Sadness and Melancholy

But whate’er you are That in this desert inaccessible, Under the shade of melancholy boughs, Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time; If ever you have look’d on better days, If ever been where bells have knoll’d to church, If ever sat at any good man’s feast, If ever from your eyelids wip’d a tear, And know what ’tis to pity, and be pitied, Let gentleness my strong enforcement be.

The big round tears Cours’d one another down his innocent nose In piteous chase.

Patch griefs with proverbs.

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.

I am never merry when I hear sweet music.

Fish not, with this melancholy bait, For this fool-gudgeon, this opinion.

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano; A stage where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one.

As a surfeit of the sweetest things The deepest loathing to the stomach brings.

A mockery king of snow.

You may my glories and my state depose, But not my griefs; still am I king of those.

Now is this golden crown like a deep well That owes two buckets filling one another; The emptier ever dancing in the air, The other down, unseen and full of water: That bucket down and full of tears am I, Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.

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.

Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows.

I beg cold comfort.

Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form.

These dreary dumps. 7

Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours, Makes the night morning, and the noontide night.

To weep is to make less the depth of grief.

All a green willow, willow, willow, All a green willow is my garland.

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

There is no greater sorrow Than to be mindful of the happy time In misery. 9

When you depict sad or unlucky people, and want to touch the reader’s heart, try to be colder—it gives their grief, as it were, a background, against which it stands out in greater relief. As it is, your heroes weep and you sigh. Yes, you must be cold.

Human misery must somewhere have a stop. There is no wind that always blows a storm.

There is something in the pang of change More than the heart can bear, Unhappiness remembering happiness.