The Haunted Palace Sadness Quotes

Sadness appears suddenly in this poem, and in a really intense way. When the "evil things" show up, they are literally wearing "sorrow," as if their clothes were made of sadness. We don't know anything about what they are or where they came from. In fact, their sudden appearance, out of nowhere, helps to emphasize how random and unexpected the loss of mental balance can be.

In this line the speaker pretty much comes out and tells us that it's time to be sad. It's an invitation to "mourn" but also kind of an order. It's like when a preacher says "let us pray." He's not making a suggestion; he's telling you what's going to happen next. So the speaker of the poem is letting us know that we're shifting gears here, and now is the time for mourning, almost as if the palace's king was dead.

The king, like his palace, is ruined, abandoned and completely filled with sadness ("desolate"). He's in such bad shape, and the atmosphere is so sad, that it's almost like he will never see another sunrise. This absence of any possible future for the monarch is part of the sadness of this section of the poem.

This is another strong death image. We've already been told to "mourn" for the king, and now we're told that the past ("old time") has been entombed—laid away like a dead body in the ground. The happiness we felt and saw in the opening stanza is dead and gone, just a distant memory.

The spirits of the palace still make the sounds that are supposed to go along with happiness. They still laugh, but all the joy is gone, and the simple, genuine smile of happiness is long gone. The fact that the poem ends with this image helps us to see how important the loss of happiness is in "The Haunted Palace."