“... the desolate
Is doubly sorrowful when it recalls
It was not always desolate.”
Change from The London Literary Gazette (3rd January 1829)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)
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Letitia Elizabeth Landon 785
English poet and novelist 1802–1838Related quotes

Our Island of Dreams.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 592.

“Pleasant is it to the unhappy to speak, and to recall the sorrows of old time.”
Dulce loqui miseris veteresque reducere questus.
Source: Thebaid, Book V, Line 48 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

Source: 1840s, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (1845), Ch. 2
Context: I have often been utterly astonished, since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears. At least, such is my experience. I have often sung to drown my sorrow, but seldom to express my happiness. Crying for joy, and singing for joy, were alike uncommon to me while in the jaws of slavery. The singing of a man cast away upon a desolate island might be as appropriately considered as evidence of contentment and happiness, as the singing of a slave; the songs of the one and of the other are prompted by the same emotion.
“Always Dowland, always sorrowful.”
Semper Dowland semper dolens.
Title of a pavan in Lachrimae, or Seven Tears (1604).
“When everyone sorrows, no one hears the sorrows.”
Donde se lamentan todos, no se oyen lamentos.
Voces (1943)