Posted on 08/11/2012 1:29:28 PM PDT by pepperdog
I am looking for a poem written by an English nobleman, Sir ________, in the poem is a stanza or possibly just one line, "there is no greater folly than the spirit of melancholy".
Asking here because freepers know just about everything.
Mel, do you have an answer for this?
I would look for this (or something reminiscent of it) in Sir Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, which has some verse in it at the beginning. There is no exact match but he makes much of the folly/melancholy rhyme, often in a comic way.
Hehehe
Absolutely nothing! No more than what austen found.
For, being an idle boy lang syne,
Who read Anacreon, and drank wine,
I early found Anacreon rhymes
Were almost passionate sometimes
And by strange alchemy of brain
His pleasures always turnd to pain
His naivete to wild desire
His wit to love his wine to fire
And so, being young and dipt in folly
I fell in love with melancholy,
And used to throw my earthly rest
And quiet all away in jest
I could not love except where Death
Was mingling his with Beautys breath
Or Hymen, Time, and Destiny
Were stalking between her and me.
There's more at this link:
http://www.eapoe.org/works/mabbott/tom1p043.htm
When I go musing all alone
Thinking of divers things fore-known,
When I build castles in the air,
Void of sorrow and void of fear,
Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet,
Methinks the time runs very fleet.
All my joys to this are folly,
Naught so sweet as melancholy.
. . .
Sir Lancelot?
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