William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Elizabethan Verse. 1907. Melancholy By John Fletcher (1579–1625)
HENCE, 1 all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly! There’s naught in this life sweet, If man were wise to see’t, 5 But only melancholy, O sweetest melancholy! Welcome folded arms and fixèd eyes, A sigh that piercing mortifies, A look that’s fasten’d to the ground, 10 A tongue chain’d up without a sound! Fountain-heads, and pathless groves, Places which pale passion loves! Moonlight walks, when all the fowls Are warmly housed, save bats and owls! 15 A midnight bell, a parting groan— These are the sounds we feed upon, Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley; Nothing’s so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.
Note 1. The Nice Valour, or the Passionate Madman, 1647. It is supposed that this song suggested Milton’s Il Penseroso. Dr. William Strode, a canon of Christ Church, wrote a reply, published in Wit Restored, 1658. [back ]
