Bereft of purpose, void of use

Depressive poet James Thomson

Where Faith and Love and Hope are dead indeed,
Can life still live on?..
He answered coldly, Take a watch, erase
The signs and figures of the circling hours,
Detach the hands, remove the dial-face;
The works proceed until run down; although
Bereft of purpose, void of use, still go.

           From "The City of Dreadful Night"
                      Section II
                      1874

I wouldn't say this passage from Thomson's (perhaps better known as "B.V.") long poem "The City of Dreadful Night" describes the effects of depression as universally as Antonio's speech in The Merchant of Venice (See: Such a want-wit sadness makes of me); but...sometimes...  Born in Scotland, he was for a time a schoolmaster in England, where he did most of his writing. He suffered from what in those days was called "constitutional melancholia." He was addicted to opium. But he was an interesting poet, sometimes called a British Poe. He wrote a book about Walt Whitman. He may have influenced Melville. He died homeless, two years after "City of Dreadful Night" was published. (See also: Line from poet James Thomson, aka B.V.)