Or is it merely a quirk of personality developed from our lived experience, or, more mechanically, merely a propensity of our genetic make-up, like a fear of heights or a taste for salty snacks?
Whatever it is, many of those of a thoughtful literary bent seem to have had a melancholy view of life, and a slightly bitter one, too.
Of course I prayed--
and did God care?
He cared as much as if in the air
a bird had cried 'Give me,'
and stamped her foot!
--Emily Dickinson
These
are the desolate, dark weeks
when nature in its barrenness
equals the stupidity of man.
The year plunges into night
and the heart plunges
lower than night
to an empty, windswept place
without sun, stars or moon
but a peculiar light as of thought
that spins a dark fire--
whirling upon itself until,
in the cold, it kindles
to make a woman aware of nothing
that she knows, not loneliness
itself--Not a ghost but
would be embraced--emptiness,
despair--(they
whine and whistle) among
the flashes and booms of war;
houses of whose rooms
the cold is greater than can be thought,
the people gone that we loved,
the beds lying empty, the couches
damp, the chairs unused--
Hide it away somewhere
out of the mind, let it get roots
and grow, unrelated to jealous
ears and eyes--for itself.
In this mine they come to dig--all.
Is this the counterfoil to sweetest
music? The source of poetry that
seeing the clock stopped, says,
The clock has stopped
that ticked yesterday so well?
and hears the sound of lake water
splashing--that is now stone.
--William Carlos Williams
