Hence, All You Vain Delights from the Nice Valour
by John Fletcher

English playwright. He wrote many plays for the Jacobean stage, both on his own and in collaboration with other dramatists. The Faithful Shepherdess (1610), The Loyal Subject (1618), The Humorous Lieutenant (1619), and A Wife for a Month (1624) are among the best plays he wrote unaided. His most fruitful collaboration was with Francis Beaumont; the most successful pieces they produced together were Philaster (1609), A Maid's Tragedy (1610-11) and A King and No King (1611). Around 1613 Fletcher wrote two plays in partnership with William Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry VIII. Other playwrights he worked with include Massinger, Rowley, Chapman, Middleton and Jonson.

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Hence, All You Vain Delights from the Nice Valour
by John Fletcher

Hence, all you vain delights,
As short as are the nights
Wherein you spend your folly:
There's nought in this life sweet,
If man were wise to see't,
But only melancholy,
O sweetest melancholy!
Welcome, folded arms, and fixed eyes,
A sigh that piercing mortifies,
A look that's fastened to the ground,
A tongue chained up without a sound;
Fountain-heads, and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves;
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are warmly housed, save bats and owls;
A midnight bell, a parting groan:
These are the sounds we feed upon;
Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley,
Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy.

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Hence, All You Vain Delights from the Nice Valour by John Fletcher