Mirth is short and transient, cheerfulness fixed and permanent† Mirth is like a flash of lightning that breaks through a gloom of clouds, and glitters for a moment: cheerfulness keeps up a kind of day-light in the mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual serenity.

-Addison,Joseph
  In The Spectator, no.381,17 May.

Lovelyare the curves of the white owl sweeping Wavy in the dusk lit by one large star. Lone on the fir-branch, his rattle-note unvaried, Brooding o'er the gloom, spins the brown eve-jar.

-Meredith, George
Poems,'Love in the Valley', stanza 5. The poem was revised and republished in1878.

Where glowing embers through the room Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, Far from all resort of mirth. Save the cricket on the hearth.

-Milton,John
c.1631 Il Penseroso, l.79^82.

Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead thou me on; The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead thou me on. Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me.

-Newman,John Henry
  'Lead, kindly Light'.

I know not how it wasöbut, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit† There was aniciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heartöan unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.

-Poe, EdgarAllan
  'The Fall of the House of Usher', in the Gentleman's Magazine, Sep.

They have spoken lightly of my deathless friends, (Lamps for my gloom, handsguiding where I stumble,) Quoting, for shallow conversational ends, What Shelley shrilled, what Blake once wildly muttered† How can they use such names and be not humble?

-Sassoon, Siegfried Louvain
  The Heart'sJourney, pt.15,'Grandeur of Ghosts'.

'Tis midnight, falls the lamp-light dull and sickly On a pale and anxious crowd, Through the court, and round the judges thronging thickly, With prayers they dare not speak aloudö Two youths, two noble youths, stand prisoners at the barö You can see them through the gloomö In the pride of life and manhood's beauty, there they are Awaiting their death-doom.

-Wilde,Jane Francesca ne¤  e Elgee
'The Brothers'.