Should I not seek

The clemency of some more temp'rate clime, To purge my gloom; and, by the sun refined, Bask in his beams, and bleach me in the wind? DRYDEN.

Light fumes are merry, grosser fumes are sad; Both are the reasonable soul run mad.

DRYDEN.

When the sun sets, shadows that show'd at noon
But small, appear most long and terrible :
So when we think fate hovers o'er our heads,
Our apprehensions shoot beyond all bounds:
Owls, ravens, crickets, seem the watch of death;
Nature's worst vermin scare her godlike sons:
Echoes, the very leavings of a voice,
Grow babbling ghosts, and call us to our graves.
Each mole-hill thought swells to a huge
Olympus;

While we,
fantastic dreamers, heave and puff
And sweat with our imagination's weight.
LEE: Edipus.

Making the cold reality too real.

MILTON.

BYRON.

When dinner has opprest one,

I think it is perhaps the gloomiest hour Which turns up out of the sad twenty-four.

With eyes upraised, as one inspired,

Pale Melancholy sat retired,

And from her wild sequester'd seat,

These pleasures, melancholy, give, And I with thee will choose to live.

MILTON.

In notes by distance made more sweet, Pour'd through the mellow horn her pensive soul.

COLLINS: Passions. This melancholy flatters, but unmans you, What is it else but penury of soul, A lazy frost, a numbness of the mind?

Ah, why th' ill-suiting pastime must I try? To gloomy care my thoughts alone are free: Ill the gay sports with troubled hearts agree. POPE.

Nay, half in heaven, except (what's mighty odd) A fit of vapours clouds this demi-god.

DRYDEN.

POPE.

All seems infected that th' infected spy, As all looks yellow to the jaundiced eye.

POPE.

Umbriel, a dusky melancholy sprite
As ever sullied the fair face of light,
Down to the central earth, his proper scene,
Repairs to search the gloomy cave of spleen.
РОРЕ.

Hear me, and touch Belinda with chagrin;
That single act gives half the world the spleen.
РОРЕ.

But o'er the twilight groves and dusky caves,
Long-sounding aisles, and intermingled graves,
Black melancholy sits, and round her throws
A death-like silence, and a dread repose:
Her gloomy presence saddens all the scene,
Shades every flower, and darkens every green,
Deepens the murmur of the falling floods,
And breathes a browner horror on the woods.
POPE: Eloisa.

In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav'nly pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns,
What means this tumult in a vestal's veins ?
POPE: Eloisa.

To ease the soul of one oppressive weight,
This quits an empire, that embroils a state:
The same adust complexion has impell'd
Charles to the convent, Philip to the field.
POPE: Moral Essays.

If, while this wearied flesh draws fleeting breath,
Not satisfied with life, afraid of death,
If haply be thy will that I should know
Glimpse of delight, or pause from anxious woe;
From now, from instant now, great Sire, dispel
The clouds that press my soul.

Through these sad shades, this chaos in my

soul,

Some seeds of light at length began to roll;
The rising motion of an infant ray

Shot glimm'ring through the cloud, and promised day.

PRIOR.

Go-you may call it madness, folly,—
You shall not chase my gloom away;
There's such a charm in melancholy,
I would not, if I could, be gay!

ROGERS.

Tell me, sweet lord, what is't that takes from thee

Thy stomach, pleasure, and thy golden sleep?
Why dost thou bend thy eyes upon the earth,
And start so often when thou sitt'st alone?
Why hast thou lost the fresh blood in thy cheeks,
And giv'n thy treasures and my rights of thee
To thick-eyed musing and cursed melancholy?
SHAKSPEARE.

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain,
And, with some sweet oblivious antidote,
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?

Still must I cherish the dear sad remembrance, At once to torture and to please my soul.

A trusty villain, very oft, When I am dull with care and melancholy, Lightens my humour with his merry jest. SHAKSPEARE.

Who alone suffers, suffers most i' th' mind, Leaving free things and happy shows behind. SHAKSPEARE.

Or if that surly spirit, melancholy,
Had bak'd thy blood, and made it heavy, thick
(Which else runs trickling up and down the
veins,

Making that idiot, laughter, keep men's eyes,
And strain their cheeks to idle merriment,
A passion hateful to my purposes).

SHAKSPEARE.
Sweet recreation barr'd, what doth ensue
But moody and dull melancholy
(Kinsman to grim and comfortless despair),
And at her heels a huge infectious troop
Of pale distemperatures and foes to life.
SHAKSPEARE.

A man of years, yet fresh as mote appear,
Of swarth complexion, and of crabbed hue,
That him full of melancholy did show.

SPENSER.

When as the day the heaven doth adorn,

I wish that night the noyous day would end; And when as night hath us of light forlorn, I wish that day would shortly reascend. SPENSER.

ADDISON.

Of joys departed, Nor to return, how painful the remembrance! BLAIR: Grave.

When time has past and seasons fled,

Your hearts will feel like mine, And aye the sang will maist delight That minds ye lang-syne.

MISS BLAMIRE: Traveller's Return.

Still o'er these scenes my memory wakes, And fondly broods with miser care; Time but the impression deeper makes, As streams their channels deeper wear.

BURNS.

Oh! friends regretted, scenes forever dear, Remembrance hails you with her warmest tear! Drooping she bends o'er pensive Fancy's urn, To trace the hours which never can return. BYRON.

And slight withal may be the things which bring Back on the heart the weight which it would fling Aside forever: it may be a sound-

A tone of music-summer's eve—or spring— A flower-the wind-the ocean-which shall wound:

Striking the electric chain wherewith we are darkly bound.

BYRON: Childe Harold.

But in that instant o'er his soul
Winters of memory seem'd to roll,
And gather in that drop of time
A life of pain, an age of crime:
O'er him who loves, or hates, or fears,
Such moments hold the grief of years.

BYRON.

But ever and anon, of grief subdued
There comes a token, like a serpent's sting,
Scarce seen, but with fresh bitterness imbued.
BYRON: Childe Harold.

Joy's recollection is no longer joy;
But sorrow's memory is sorrow still!

BYRON: Marino Faliero.

While Memory watches o'er the sad review
Of joys that faded like the morning dew.

CAMPBELL: Pleasures of Hope.

What peaceful hours I once enjoy'd!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill.

COWPER: Walking with God.

O days remember'd well remember'd all!
The bitter sweet, the honey and the gall;
Those garden rambles in the silent night,
Those trees so shady, and that moon so bright,
That thickset alley by the arbour closed,
That woodbine seat where we at last reposed;
And then the hopes that came and then were
gone,

Quick as the clouds beneath the moon past on.
CRABBE.

No joy like by-past joy appears;
For what is gone we fret and pine:
Were life spun out a thousand years,
It could not match Langsyne!

DELTA. (D. M. MOIR.)

Had memory been lost with innocence,
We had not known the sentence nor th' offence;
'Twas his chief punishment to keep in store
The sad remembrance what he was before.
DENHAM.

None grow so old

Not to remember where they hid their gold;
From age such art of memory we learn
To forget nothing what is our concern:
Their interest no priest nor sorcerer
Forgets, nor lawyer, nor philosopher;
No understanding memory can want
Where wisdom studious industry doth plant.

DENHAM.

Sometimes forgotten things, long cast behind,
Rush forward in the brain, and come to mind:
The nurse's legends are for truths received,
And the man dreams but what the boy believed.
DRYDEN.

O memory! thou fond deceiver,
Still unfortunate and vain,

To former joys recurring ever,

And turning all the past to pain : Thou, like the world, th' opprest oppressing, Thy smiles increase the wretch's woe! And he who wants each other blessing In thee must ever find a foe.

GOLDSMITH.

Remembrance wakes with all her busy train, Swells at my breast, and turns the past to pain. GOLDSMITH: Deserted Village.

Ah, tell me not that memory

Sheds gladness o'er the past: What is recall'd by faded flowers, Save that they do not last? Were it not better to forget, Than but remember and regret?

L. E. LANDON.

We might have been,-these are but common words,

And yet they make the sum of life's bewailing: They are the echo of those finer chords Whose music we deplore, when unavailing. We might have been!

Life knoweth no like misery: the rest

Are single sorrows; but in this are blended All sweet emotions that disturb the breast; The light that once was loveliest is ended. We might have been!

Henceforth, how much of the full heart must be
A sealed book, at whose contents we tremble!
A still voice mutters 'mid our misery,
The worst to bear, because it must dissemble,
We might have been!

L. E. LANDON.

Ease to the body some, none to the mind
From restless thoughts, that, like a deadly swarm
Of hornets arm'd, no sooner found alone,
But rush upon me thronging, and present
Times past, what once I was, and what I'm now.

MILTON.

Thought and her shadowy brood thy call obey, And place and time are subject to thy sway! ROGERS: Pleasures of Memory. Lull'd in the countless chambers of the brain, Our thoughts are link'd by many a hidden chain, Awake but one, and lo, what myriads rise! Each stamps its image as the other flies!

ROGERS: Pleasures of Memory.

When musing on companions gone,
We doubly feel ourselves alone.

SIR W. SCOTT: Marmion.

I cannot but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me.

SHAKSPEARE.

Let never day nor night unhallow'd pass,
But still remember what the Lord hath done.
SHAKSPEARE