Poetry · Chapter
Chapter LV explained
The speaker invokes Melancholy, Music, and Echo, calling for despondent sighs and a pale light in the cypress glooms, tinting marble tombs with silver.
What happens
The speaker invokes Melancholy, Music, and Echo, calling for despondent sighs and a pale light in the cypress glooms, tinting marble tombs with silver.
Themes in this chapter
Sorrow and Melancholy
The chapter directly addresses Melancholy and calls for despondent music and sighs.
Mortality and the Sublime
Imagery of cypress glooms and marble tombs evokes death and the sublime.
Characters to notice
Key passages
“O Melancholy, linger here awhile! O Music, Music, breathe despondingly! O Echo, Echo, from some sombre isle, Unknown, Lethean, sigh to us—O sigh!”
The speaker pleads for Melancholy to stay, for Music to sound mournfully, and for Echo to send a sigh from a dark, forgetful island.
The invocation sets a tone of deep sorrow and longing.
“Spirits in grief, lift up your heads, and smile; Lift up your heads, sweet Spirits, heavily, And make a pale light in your cypress glooms, Tinting with silver wan your marble tombs.”
The speaker urges sorrowful spirits to raise their heads and smile faintly, casting a pale silver light through the dark cypress trees onto their white marble tombs.
This image blends grief with a ghostly, beautiful illumination of death.