English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 187. Melancholy |
| | | John Fletcher (1579–1625) |
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| HENCE, all you vain delights, | |
| As short as are the nights, | |
| Wherein you spend your folly: | |
| There’s nought 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. | |
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