The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and social aims [Vol. 8]

and which neither any competitor could outdo, nor the bard himself again equal. Try this strain of Beaumont and Fletcher:—

"Hence, all ye vain delights,As short as are the nightsIn which you spend your folly!There's naught in this life sweet,If men were wise to see 't,But only melancholy.Oh! 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,Midnight walks, when all the fowlsAre warmly housed, save bats and owls;A midnight bell, a passing 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."1Open page

Keats disclosed by certain lines in his Hyperion this inward skill; and Coleridge showed at least his love and appetency for it. It appears in Ben Jonson's songs, including certainly The Faery beam upon you, etc., Waller's Go, Lovely Rose! Herbert's Virtue and Easter, and Lovelace's lines To Althea and To Lucasta, and Collins's

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Title: The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and social aims [Vol. 8]
Author: Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 1803-1882.
Canvas: Page 55
Publication: Boston ; New York :: Houghton, Mifflin,; [1903-1904].

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Collection: The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Full citation: "The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and social aims [Vol. 8]." In the digital collection The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/4957107.0008.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed June 13, 2025.

The complete works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Letters and social aims [Vol. 8]

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