English Poetry I: From Chaucer to Gray.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
John Fletcher
187. Melancholy
H
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,
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,
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!
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.