Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf. So Eden sank to grief, So dawn goes down to day. Nothing gold can stay.
Joy, grief, desire or fear, whate'er the name The passion bears, its influence is the same; Where things exceed your hope or fall below, You stare, look blank, grow numb from top to toe.
There are friendships to one who lives in society; thus our present grief arises from having friendships; observing the evils resulting from friendship, let one walk alone like a rhinoceros.
[S]uppose the mind of [a] friend of humanity were clouded over with his own grief, extinguishing all sympathetic participation in the fate of others; he still has the resources to be beneficent to those suffering distress, but the distress of others does not touch him because he is sufficiently busy with his own; and now, where no inclination any longer stimulates him to it, he tears himself out of his deadly insensibility and does the action without any inclination, solely from duty.
Chorus: Zeus, who guided men to think who laid it down that wisdom comes alone through suffering. Still there drips in sleep against the heart grief of memory; against our pleasure we are temperate.
Who alone suffers suffers most i' th' mind,
Leaving free things and happy shows behind;
But then the mind much sufferance doth o'erskip
When grief hath mates, and bearing fellowship.