Why, Byron asks himself, in his diary (at Ravenna), why, at the very height of desire and human pleasure, does there mingle a certain sense of doubt and sorrow—a fear of what is to come—a doubt of what _is_—a retrospect of the past, leading to a prognostication of the future? Mrs. Browning has penned a suggestive sonnet to which the title is superscribed of Pain in Pleasure: “A thought lay like a flower upon my heart, And drew around it other thoughts like bees For multitude and thirst of sweetnesses,— Whereat rejoicing, I desired the art Of the Greek whistler, who to wharf and mart Could lure those insect swarms from orange-trees, That I might hive me with such thoughts, and please My soul so, always. Foolish counterpart Of a weak man’s vain wishes! While I spake, The thought I called a flower, grew nettle-rough— The thoughts called bees, stung me to festering, Oh, entertain (cried reason, as she woke,) Your best and gladdest thoughts but long enough, And they will all prove sad enough to sting.” As Shakspeare words it in one of _his_ sonnets, “Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud; Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun, And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud,” and every gourd has its worm. So again Cowper: “Here every drop of honey hides a sting; Worms wind themselves into our sweetest flowers.” On the same text moralizes the meditative sire of the Cid, in Corneille’s tragedy: “Jamais nous ne goûtons de parfaite allégresse: Nos plus heureux succès sont mêlés de tristesse; Toujours quelques soucis en ces événements Troublent la pureté de nos contentements.” _Semper amari aliquid._ It is like Johnson’s reflections on his first transports at Ranelagh. When first he entered those festive gardens, it gave, he tells Boswell, an expansion and gay sensation to his mind, such as he never experienced anywhere else. But, as Xerxes wept when he reviewed his immense army, and considered that not one of that great multitude would be alive a hundred years afterwards, so it went to the doctor’s heart to consider that there was not one in all that brilliant circle but was afraid to go home and think; that “the thoughts of each individual there would be distressing when alone.” Boswell approves the reflection as “experimentally just,” and appends a commonplace of his own, upon the feeling of langour, which succeeds the animation of gaiety, being itself a very severe pain.