ALONE.

THE man I cannot comprehend
    Is he who dreads alone to be,
Who, if he cannot have a friend,
    Would welcome e’en an enemy;

The beggared and unhappy elf

    Who craves an alms of words from all,
With no resources in himself
    And no internal festival;

Who never felt the shy caress,
    When voices failed and footsteps fled,

From the soft hand of Loneliness;
    Who never wakened from the dead

The blessed thoughts that shun the crowd,
    And over wood and meadow brood,
Where bird and branch and bending cloud

    Enweave the spell of solitude; [Page 58]

Who never knew the scholar’s lust,
    The artist’s lone ecstatic day;
Who never strove because he must,
    And not for praise or place or pay.

Give me the friend whose honest hand
    Glad greeting, glad good-bye, has shown,
Whose soul is fragrant of the land
    Where Silence dwelleth all alone. [Page 59]