Fling but a stone, the giant dies;
Laugh, and be well. Monkies have been
Extreme good doctors for the spleen;
And kittens, if the humor hit,
Have harlequined away the fit.
But, alas! the heart shuts itself against every pleasing sensation, and the mind dismisses every cheering sentiment. Joy opens in vain its festal arms to receive him; and he shuns embraces, whose light and mirthful air would only serve to increase the melancholy of his dreary and distempered mind. Even the tender, affectionate offices of friendship, in endeavoring to sooth and divert his mind by lively conversation and social intercourse, appear officious and ill-timed. His spirits are quite dejected; his faculties become torpid; and his sense of enjoyment is annihilated. The charming air which breathes to us the sweetest fragrance, and most invigorating delights, feels to him like a pestilent congregation of vapors.
His pensive spirit takes the lonely grove
Nightly he visits all the sylvan scenes,
Where, far remote, a melancholy moon
Raising her head, serene and shorn of beams,