World Mental Health Day

I love the smell of irony in the morning.

The philosopher, John Stuart Mill, talked about the crisis in his mental health and turning to Wordsworth's poetry described it as 'medicine for my state of mind' ...

'What made Wordsworth’s poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a Source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared in by all human beings; which had no connexion with struggle of imperfection, but would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or social condition of mankind.'

These Chairs they have no words to utter - William Wordsworth

These Chairs they have no words to utter,
No fire is in the grate to stir or flutter,
The ceiling and floor are mute as a stone,
My chamber is hushed and still,
And I am alone,
Happy and alone.

Oh who would be afraid of life,
The passion the sorrow and the strife,
When he may be
Sheltered so easily?
May lie in peace on his bed
Happy as they who are dead.

Half an hour afterwards
I have thoughts that are fed by the sun.
The things which I see
Are welcome to me,
Welcome every one:
I do not wish to lie
Dead, dead,
Dead without any company;
Here alone on my bed,
With thoughts that are fed by the Sun,
And hopes that are welcome every one,
Happy am I.

O Life, there is about thee
A deep delicious peace,
I would not be without thee,
Stay, oh stay!
Yet be thou ever as now,
Sweetness and breath with the quiet of death,
Be but thou ever as now,
Peace, peace, peace.