Things I’ve Learned While Roaming the Earth

Something in the world seems melancholy tonight.  The stars lay veiled behind the darkened whisps of evening clouds.  As a lover of poetry, melancholy has always been a fascinating word to me. But for a long time, I struggled to find the definition of the word. When it appears in literature and poetry, it’s a concept that’s often elusive and obscure, like the night winds that rock the nearby leaves of the trees.  My chair creaks lightly against the deck as the definition of melancholy swirls through my brain. The more I read classic poetry, the more I was surprised to find that the language used by the poets on the definition and subject of melancholy was often purposefully ambiguous. They seemed hesitant to want to explain it, as though it’s some feeling that none can define.

And as I continued to read the classic poems, more and more I encountered the idea of a strange and indescribable longing locked away deeply in every human heart, a yearning for something that none can clearly define.  If one were to summarize it, they could only say that it’s simply the longing to live life to the full, to seize the day. Soren Kierkegaard defined it in Purity of Heart this way: “It seems to him, according to the poets’ explanation, as if something inexpressible thrusts itself forward from his innermost being, the unspeakable, for which indeed language has no vessel of expression. Even the longing is not the unspeakable itself. It is only the hastening after it.”

The classic poets who often talked about this feeling of melancholy and longing, confirm what Kierkegaard said by leaving the feeling ambiguous. Here are some excerpts from a few poems that talk about melancholy. Notice the same inexpressible, ambiguous nature of the wording. The first excerpt is from “The Buried Life,” by Matthew Arnold.

1

“Light flows our war of mocking words, and yet,

Behold, with tears my eyes are wet.

I feel a nameless sadness o’er me roll”

2

He talks about a nameless sadness, an indefinable force that makes his heart sigh. Next from “Maud Muller,” by John Greenleaf Whittier:

1

“But, when she glanced to the far-off town,

White from its hill-slope looking down,

2

The sweet song died, and a vague unrest

And a nameless longing filled her breast–”

3

Again the same language is used. When talking about melancholy, the poets are almost always purposefully vague. And yet, this very ambiguity about the human condition is probably what makes these poems so deep and powerful. The poets keep the feelings un-named, knowing that such emotions are locked away inside every human heart, that though we try, we cannot explain them, only feel them drawn out through the beauty of noble things.

There is one more excerpt that speaks to this definition of melancholy. I’ve saved it for last, because it’s the most powerful. It’s an excerpt from “The Day is Done,” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

1

“The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in flight.

2

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist,

And a feeling of sadness comes o’er me

That my soul cannot resist.

3

A feeling of sadness and longing,

That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.”

4

There is a subtle, devious sadness to the world in which we live – a sorrow that comes to call in the night, when we’re all alone under the canopy of a countless array of stars. Something within us knows that we ought to be better than we are – that our love ought to burn brighter and shine more fiercely – that our conviction and passion to live life to the full ought to always win the day, never resigning ourselves to that nagging temptation to settle for the ordinary, the mundane. Something within us understands that life was always meant to be lived to the full. And this something, when it comes to find us, though it does not bring any answers with it, it convicts us of all the cheap and common things we often settle for. This feeling, in my mind, is the definition of melancholy.