Greg Ferro - Work to Live

Follow @EtherealMind on Micro.blog.

Ode to Melancholy

Seems a fitting poem for Boxing Day as the day after Christmas Day. Now that the orgiastic feast of food, gifting and family is done, it’s time to feel a little let down. In this poem, Keats celebrates melancholy and the periods when you energy flags, your soul rests and your mind is looking for the exit.

Personally, I draw strength from this times of turning away from the drive to succeed, pressure to deliver and the race to completion.

Celebrate the sad times, they make the happy times sweeter. That’s what I find this poem says to me.

Ode to Melancholy

Though you should build a bark of dead men’s bones, And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast, Stitch creeds together for a sail, with groans To fill it out, bloodstained and aghast; Although your rudder be a Dragon’s tail, Long sever’d, yet still hard with agony, Your cordage large uprootings from the skull Of bald Medusa; certes you would fail To find the Melancholy, whether she Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull.

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries; For shade to shade will come too drowsily, And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud; Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, Or on the wealth of globed peonies; Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave, And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine; His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

John Keats - Published 1918.