The reopening of Keats’ house in London, and the release soon of a film about his love affair with Fanny Braun, has UD reopening a poem of his that she’s always found difficult.

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Ode on Melancholy

No, no! go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kist
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globèd peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

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Three stanzas, three sentences, in praise of sadness. An ode, after all, a song of praise, directed to you, emphatically, from its first lines: NO. Don’t go killing yourself.

Fine, you are experiencing deep sorrow, yes; but suicide, or doping yourself into a living suicide, so that you don’t feel anything anymore, and therefore have rid yourself of the depression that seems to be killing you — this can’t be the answer. Don’t drown your soul’s anguish. That anguish is in fact wakeful; and you ought to attend to that wakefulness, and see what it’s about.

When depression descends, when it hits out of nowhere, and hits hard, go with it. As Charles Wright puts it in one of UD‘s favorite poems, let what’s taking you take you. Glut thy sorrow on a morning rose… on the wealth of globèd peonies.  Go to the natural world with it, and feel grief fully as it deepens, with wistfulness and poignancy, the beauty of the world.  Or if those soft emotions – wistfulness and all that – go by the wayside, and  your sorrow explodes into rage, go there too.  Let it rave; feed deep on it.

Sorrow lives with, lives in, beauty.  Death is the mother of beauty, writes Wallace Stevens.  And Keats: “In the very  temple of Delight / Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine.”  Our brevity, the brevity of the world, the brevity of love —  these brevities give beauty to our moments.  To experience our lives with the depth and often harsh clarity of this awareness is the only way to experience our lives fully, strongly: “whose strenuous tongue / Can burst Joy’s grape.”  This is, among other things, a sexual poem.  It evokes sensual power, the strength to

…tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.

After all, Marvell also writes, in To His Coy Mistress:

The grave’s a fine and private place
But none I think do there embrace.

To take the path sick sorrow took is to take the only path that matters — the path of the fully lived life, which tastes the sadness of her might.