"Days and weeks have worn away,-that is the word,-worn away with such dull joylessness that they seem to me like the heavy dreams of a sick man.
"Wives and Widows; or The Broken Life"
Ann S. Stephens
How long I shall endure this terrible joylessness I cannot tell.
"Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1"
Francis Hueffer (translator)
Both in "Troilus And Cressid" and in the "House of Fame" the poet's tone, when he refers to himself, is generally dolorous; but while both poems contain unmistakeable references to the joylessness of his own married life, in the latter he speaks of himself as "suffering debonairly,"-or, as we should say, putting a good face upon-a state "desperate of all bliss."
"Chaucer"
Adolphus William Ward