“Joy, once lost, is pain”

“Forget the dead, the past? O yet there are ghosts that may take revenge for it, memories that make the heart a tomb, regrets which gild thro’ the spirit’s gloom, and with ghastly whispers tell that joy, once lost, is pain.”

“I have drunken deep of joy,And I will taste no other wine tonight.”

“We look before and after,And pine for what is not;Our sincerest laughterWith some pain is fraught;Our sweetest songs are those that tell Of saddest thought.”

“What objects are the fountainsOf thy happy strain?What fields, or waves, or mountains?What shapes of sky or plain?What love of thine own kind? What ignorance of pain?”

“I have sent books and music there, and all / Those instruments with which high spirits call / The future from its cradle, and the past / Out of its grave, and make the present last / In thoughts and joys which sleep, but cannot die, / Folded within their own eternity.”

“I have neither curiosity, interest, pain nor pleasure, in anything, good or evil, they can say of me. I feel only a slight disgust, and a sort of wonder that they presume to write my name.”