comment-Oh Melancholy-3 Oh Melancholy

Not to over-burden the point, but I looked up melancholy in the Oxford English Dictionary online to search for its more positive uses. In one of its many definitions it is written as “Sadness, esp. of a pensive nature; gloominess; pensiveness or introspection; an inclination or tendency to this”, here Melancholia as kmasters and lbridger write in their snips remain and oh melancholyrepresents a mournfulness easily associated with Wordsworth’s Egotistical Sublime. Sonnet XXXII- to Melancholy, by Charlotte Smith describes “For at such hours the shadowy, phantom, pale/ Oft seems to fleet before the poet’s eyes” almost directly repeating Tintern Abbey in its lines, “But oft, in lonely rooms…In hours of weariness, sensations sweet…And passing even into my purer mind/ With tranquil restoration: -feelings too/ Of unremembered pleasure;” (here).

In another definition from the OED, we find Melancholy as a source of “aesthetic pleasure” given to “tender, sentimental, or reflective sadness; sadness giving rise to or considered as a subject for poetry, sentimental reflection, etc.” reflecting lines from Smith like “such thy magic pwer,/That to soul these dreams are often sweet/ And soothe the pensive visionary mind!” (here).

Finally as lbridger writes in the poem’s initial lines “When latest Autumn spreads her evening veil/ And the grey mists from these dim waves arise,” (here), Melancholy’s “magic power” seems closest to Keats To Autumn in “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”.

On a final note, Melancholy not only seems an element of the Romantic Poetess in her suffering and dejection, but moreso a general Romantic trait. Nothing is more “romanticized” than the predominant tone of a moment passed and its idealization. Among all our poets, it can be accurately said that beauty is but a fleeting principle and life exists solely in the near past.