When Melancholy Drowns My Interests

When melancholy drowns my interests, all seem lost; when depression manifests, I travel through the valley of this death, lacking life, hope—even desire for breath! So, I turn from the darkness within me; remove the theme, “To be, or not to be?” and lay aside despair and misery, to fall in love once more with Poetry. For two loves have I, God and the Muses: one gives, the other neither refuses. Ere long, Parnassian heals me in time; and I improve before the end of this rhyme! For mightier than despair is the Lord, and the pen whose rhyme eclipses the sword.