Happiness – Amy Lowell

Happiness
Happiness, to some, elation;
Is, to others, mere stagnation.
Days of passive somnolence,
At its wildest, indolence.
Hours of empty quietness,
No delight, and no distress.
Happiness to me is wine,
Effervescent, superfine.
Full of tang and fiery pleasure,
Far too hot to leave me leisure
For a single thought beyond it.
Drunk! Forgetful! This the bond: it
Means to give one’s soul to gain
Life’s quintessence. Even pain
Pricks to livelier living, then
Wakes the nerves to laugh again,
Rapture’s self is three parts sorrow.
Although we must die to-morrow,
Losing every thought but this;
Torn, triumphant, drowned in bliss.
Happiness: We rarely feel it.
I would buy it, beg it, steal it,
Pay in coins of dripping blood
For this one transcendent good.
– Amy Lowell

Amy Lowell (1874-1925), American Imagist poet, was a woman of great accomplishment.
One of the best rebuttals was written by Heywood Broun , in his obituary tribute to Amy. He wrote, “She was upon the surface of things a Lowell, a New Englander and a spinster. But inside everything was molten like the core of the earth… Given one more gram of emotion, Amy Lowell would have burst into flame and been consumed to cinders.”
Amy’s book, What’s O’Clock, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1926, a year after her death.
source: famous poets and poems.com