Observations placeholder
John Fletcher - Melancholy
Identifier
012542
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
In the following, we find an alternative perspective on the travel down the symbolic valley. Instead of fear we may get an odd satisfaction out of confronting that we know is our weakness, we may also find that the very weakness or problem is oddly comforting, that despite the fact it causes us sorrow or is itself sorrow, there is something comforting about its presence, perhaps because we have always had to live with it.
The poem in some ways tackles the odd facet of human nature that it occasionally obtains a perverse sort of pleasure from misery……….
A description of the experience
John Fletcher - Melancholy
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,
But only melancholy,
O sweetest melancholy.
Welcome folded arms and fixed eyes,
A sigh that piercing mortifies,
A look that's fastened to the ground,
A tongue chained 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