The Spirit of Melancholy or Melancholy Spirit

None | Unknown | Unknown

[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.

[Rushmore Rocks]

Mel, do you have an answer for this?

[austen]

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.

[melancholy]

Hehehe

Absolutely nothing! No more than what austen found.

[mojito]

Edgar Allen Poe originally published his poem “Romance” with these lines, which were later suppressed by the author:

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 turn’d 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 Beauty’s 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

[AZLiberty]

Another candidate:

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.
. . .

[Twinkie]

Sir Lancelot?