Fish not, with this melancholy bait,

For this fool gudgeon, this opinion.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): The Merchant of Venice. Act i. Sc. 1.

Under the shade of melancholy boughs,

Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time;

If ever you have look'd on better days,

If ever been where bells have knoll'd to church,

If ever sat at any good man's feast.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): As You Like It. Act ii. Sc. 7.

There's naught in this life sweet,

If man were wise to see 't,

But only melancholy;

O sweetest Melancholy!

John Fletcher (1576-1625): The Nice Valour. Act iii. Sc. 3.

There's not a string attuned to mirth

But has its chord in melancholy.

Thomas Hood (1798-1845): Ode to Melancholy.

The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,

Of wailing winds and naked woods and meadows brown and sear.

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878): The Death of the Flowers.

He is of a very melancholy disposition.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Much Ado about Nothing. Act i. Sc. 1.

Elysian beauty, melancholy grace,

Brought from a pensive though a happy place.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Laodamia.

I am all the daughters of my father's house,

And all the brothers too.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616): Twelfth Night. Act ii. Sc. 4.

And taste

The melancholy joy of evils past:

For he who much has suffer'd, much will know.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744): The Odyssey of Homer. Book xv. Line 434.

Plac'd far amid the melancholy main.

James Thomson (1700-1748): The Castle of Indolence. Canto i. Stanza 30.

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth,

A youth to fortune and to fame unknown:

Fair Science frown'd not on his humble birth,

And Melancholy mark'd him for her own.

Thomas Gray (1716-1771): The Epitaph.

Moping melancholy

And moon-struck madness.

John Milton (1608-1674): Paradise Lost. Book xi. Line 485.

Sweet bird, that shun'st the noise of folly,

Most musical, most melancholy!

John Milton (1608-1674): Il Penseroso. Line 61.

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,

Or by the lazy Scheld or wandering Po.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774): The Traveller. Line 1.

Go! you may call it madness, folly;

You shall not chase my gloom away!

There's such a charm in melancholy

I would not if I could be gay.

Samuel Rogers (1763-1855): To ——.

Forc'd from their homes, a melancholy train,

To traverse climes beyond the western main;

Where wild Oswego spreads her swamps around,

And Niagara stuns with thundering sound.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774): The Traveller. Line 409.

Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste.

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878): Thanatopsis.

When lovely woman stoops to folly,

And finds too late that men betray,

What charm can soothe her melancholy?

What art can wash her guilt away?

Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774): The Hermit. On Woman. Chap. xxiv.