“In nature there is nothing melancholy.
–But some night-wandering Man, whose heart was pierc’d
With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,
Or slow distemper or neglected love,
(And so, poor Wretch! fill’d all things with himself
And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale
Of his own sorrows) he and such as he
First nam’d these notes a melancholy strain;
And many a poet echoes the conceit,
Poet, who hath been building up the rhyme
When he had better far have stretch’d his limbs
Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell
By sun or moonlight, to the influxes
Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements
Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song
And his fame forgetful! so his fame
Should share in nature’s immortality,
A venerable thing! and so his song
should make all nature lovelier, and itself
Be lov’d, like nature! –But ’twill not be so…”
– from “The Nightingale,” S.T. Coleridge, in Lyrical Ballads. He, and such as he. Yep.
Dara Weinberg 