"I'll not change my life with any King,
I ravisht am: can the world bring
More joy, than still to laugh and smile,
In pleasant toyes time to beguile?
Do not, O do not trouble me,
So sweet content I feel and see.
All my joyes to this are folly,
None so divine as melancholy.

"I'll change my state with any wretch
Thou canst from goale or dunghill fetch:
My pain's past cure, another hell,
I may not in this torment dwell,
Now desperate I hate my life,
Lend me a halter or a knife;
All my griefs to this are jolly,
None so damn'd as melancholy."

The depressed stage of this disorder is commonly shown by retardation
of thought and motion, the excited stage by pressure of activity and
acceleration of thought. In the so-called "flight of ideas" words succeed
each other with incredible rapidity, without goal idea, but each word
suggesting the next by sound or other association, thus:

"Are you blue?"

"Blue, true blue, red white and blue, one flag and one nation, one kingdom,
one king, no not one king, one president, we are going to have a president
first, cursed, the worst."