Solitude

We perished, each alone:

We live, as we dream—alone.

Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,

There’s none of these so lonely and poor of old,

How does it feel To be on your own With no direction home Like a complete unknown Like a rolling stone?

How can I die alone. Where will I be then who am now alone, what groans so pathetically in this room where I am alone?

Oh lonesome’s a bad place To get crowded into.

I am alone; all drowns in the Pharisees’ hypocrisy. To live your life is not as simple as to cross a field. 1

Just when you think you’re on the point of release From loneliness, then loneliness swoops down upon you.

We live in an old chaos of the sun, Or old dependency of day and night, Or island solitude, unsponsored, free, Of that wide water, inescapable. Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail Whistle about us their spontaneous cries; Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness; And, in the isolation of the sky, At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make Ambiguous undulations as they sink, Downward to darkness, on extended wings.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made: Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

I never saw a man who looked With such a wistful eye Upon that little tent of blue Which prisoners call the sky.

Adventure most unto itself The Soul condemned to be— Attended by a single Hound Its own identity.

I cannot live with You— It would be Life— And Life is over there— Behind the Shelf.

The Soul selects her own Society— Then—shuts the Door— To her divine Majority— Present no more—

Yes, in the sea of life enisled, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone .

The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.

’Tis solitude should teach us how to die; It hath no flatterers; vanity can give No hollow aid; alone—man with his God must strive.

I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs, A palace and a prison on each hand.

Among them, but not of them; in a shroud Of thoughts which were not their thoughts.

To fly from, need not be to hate, mankind.

O Wedding Guest! This soul hath been Alone on a wide wide sea: So lonely ’twas, that God himself Scarce seemèd there to be.

Alone, alone, all, all alone; Alone on a wide, wide sea.

Which is the bliss of solitude.