This tone of thought, and the many misfortunes and gloomy forebodings that attended Branwell's later years, had a natural effect in giving a mournful cast to almost every emanation of his muse; and we find, in effect, throughout the poems here collected, that, save in one instance—'The Epicurean's Song'—which we feel to be the production of a moment of elation, there is scarcely a line that does not breathe a consciousness of sad regret, or of cruel and bitter sorrow.
He was filled with the sense of the futility of human joy, and the abiding presence of woe:
'No! joy itself is but a shade,
So well may its remembrance die,
But cares, Life's conquerors, never fade,
So strong is their reality.'
These sorrows, as years went by, grew so terrible in their crushing weight, that the mind could barely withstand them, and Branwell felt, in that period when his cry was for peace in death, that, when the light of life is gone,
'There come no sorrows crowding on,
And powerless lies Despair.'
With Branwell, indeed, as with Mary in his poem of 'Percy Hall,' 'thought felt irksome to the heated brain.'