The spleen is seldom felt where Flora reigns; The lowering eye, the petulance, the frown, And sullen sadness that o’ershade, distort, And mar the face of beauty, when no cause For such immeasurable woe appears, These Flora banishes, and gives the fair Sweet smiles, and bloom less transient than her own. It is the constant revolution, stale And tasteless, of the same repeated joys That palls and satiates, and makes languid life A pedlar’s pack that bows the bearer down. Health suffers, and the spirits ebb; the heart Recoils from its own choice—at the full feast Is famished—finds no music in the song, No smartness in the jest, and wonders why. Yet thousands still desire to journey on, Though halt and weary of the path they tread. The paralytic, who can hold her cards But cannot play them, borrows a friend’s hand To deal and shuffle, to divide and sort Her mingled suits and sequences, and sits Spectatress both and spectacle, a sad And silent cipher, while her proxy plays. Others are dragged into the crowded room Between supporters; and once seated, sit Through downright inability to rise, Till the stout bearers lift the corpse again. These speak a loud memento. Yet even these Themselves love life, and cling to it as he, That overhangs a torrent, to a twig. They love it, and yet loathe it; fear to die, Yet scorn the purposes for which they live. Then wherefore not renounce them? No—the dread, The slavish dread of solitude, that breeds Reflection and remorse, the fear of shame, And their inveterate habits, all forbid. Whom call we gay? That honour has been long The boast of mere pretenders to the name. The innocent are gay—the lark is gay, That dries his feathers saturate with dew Beneath the rosy cloud, while yet the beams Of day-spring overshoot his humble nest. The peasant too, a witness of his song, Himself a songster, is as gay as he. But save me from the gaiety of those Whose headaches nail them to a noonday bed; And save me, too, from theirs whose haggard eyes Flash desperation, and betray their pangs For property stripped off by cruel chance; From gaiety that fills the bones with pain, The mouth with blasphemy, the heart with woe.