On Melancholy.
Stand off, physician! let me frolick
With my humour melancholick.
'Tis pleasure—it is pain likewise;
Tis hell, and yet a paradise.
Tis white and black,—'tis all upon
Checker'd imagination.
Tis an odd conceited theam;
'Tis nature's rambling idle dream;
Her cheating optick-glass, which lies,
Falsely abstracts and multiplies.
With my humour melancholick.
'Tis pleasure—it is pain likewise;
Tis hell, and yet a paradise.
Tis white and black,—'tis all upon
Checker'd imagination.
Tis an odd conceited theam;
'Tis nature's rambling idle dream;
Her cheating optick-glass, which lies,
Falsely abstracts and multiplies.
The man of Rhodes, whose stature was
Nine hundred camels' load of brass,
This mighty Phœbus can't compare
With the melancholy I bear,
In hands, feet, nose—fancy makes him
Bigger by far in every limb.
Nine hundred camels' load of brass,
This mighty Phœbus can't compare
With the melancholy I bear,
In hands, feet, nose—fancy makes him
Bigger by far in every limb.
Another wasteful humour straight
Brings him down to a half ounce weight,
Then, like some bird, (a pretty folly!)
Flies aloft, wing'd with melancholy!
He's air, or some thin exhalation
Next degree to annihilation.
Brings him down to a half ounce weight,
Then, like some bird, (a pretty folly!)
Flies aloft, wing'd with melancholy!
He's air, or some thin exhalation
Next degree to annihilation.
'Tis thraldom, freedom, 'tis express
Good company, and loneliness;
It laughs, and cries, all in one breath;
'Tis wealth or want, 'tis life or death.
A Bedlam-trance, 'tis what you will,
'Tis as you'd have it, well or ill.
A fickle contradicting mood,
Arising from distempered blood.
Good company, and loneliness;
It laughs, and cries, all in one breath;
'Tis wealth or want, 'tis life or death.
A Bedlam-trance, 'tis what you will,
'Tis as you'd have it, well or ill.
A fickle contradicting mood,
Arising from distempered blood.
Stand off, physician I 'tis, I'm sure,
As a disease, so its own cure.
As a disease, so its own cure.