The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.

There' s not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay.

Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss conveyed
A fairer spirit or more welcome shade.

No real joy can reach us from the rational mechanism of capitalist exploitation. Joy does not have fixed rules to catalogue it.

Who can say
Why Today
Tomorrow will be Yesterday?
Who can tell
Why to smell
The violet, recall the dewy prime
Of youth and buried time?
The cause is never found in rhyme.

There rose no day there rolled no hour
Of pleasure unembittered;
And not a trapping decked my Power
That galled not while it glittered.

There is no such thing as a cheerful poem [...] Happiness writes in water, not ink.

Joy, once lost, is pain

There is joy over disappointment And delight in hopes that were vain. Each poet is glad there was no cure To stop his lonely pain. For nothing keeps a poet In his high singing mood Like unappeasable hunger For unattainable food.

Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.

We never taste a perfect joy;
Our happiest successes are mixed with sadness.

He that never had sorrow of love never had joy of it either!

Without the meed of some melodious tear.

Happiness quite unshared can scarcely be called happiness; it has no taste.