Happiness Quote by William Cartwright

Grief shows up here not as dignified silence but as a sharp refusal of consolation: "Tell me not of joy". Cartwright opens by slamming the door on the polite social script that expects mourning to be managed, soothed, and made presentable. The lost "little sparrow" sounds like a pet, but the poem keeps slipping into the language of courtship and performance: "toy and woo", "chirp and flatter", "hang the wing awhile". The bird becomes a miniature dramatist, staging affection with timing, teasing, and calculated pauses until the speaker yields a smile.

That theatricality matters because Cartwright was a playwright in a culture that prized witty love-games and masks of feeling. The sparrow isn't only beloved; he's a master of the tiny rituals that make intimacy feel alive. The speaker's grief, then, isn't just for a creature but for a whole feedback loop of attention: the flirtation, the suspense, the moment when affection is proven by its power to change your face.

The kicker is the comic bitterness of "Lord! how sullen he would be!" Even in mourning, the speaker can't resist a stage aside, a half-laugh at the sparrow's moody tactics. That tonal twist reveals the subtext: love is remembered most vividly not as purity but as behavior - charming, manipulative, ridiculous, real. The poem works because it refuses to sanctify the dead; it keeps the sparrow's personality intact, which is exactly what makes the loss hurt.