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From “Childe Harold,” Canto II.
’T IS night, when Meditation bids us feel | |
| We once have loved, though love is at an end: | |
| The heart, lone mourner of its baffled zeal, | |
| Though friendless now, will dream it had a friend. | |
| Who with the weight of years would wish to bend, | 5 |
| When Youth itself survives young Love and joy? | |
| Alas! when mingling souls forget to blend, | |
| Death hath but little left him to destroy! | |
| Ah! happy years! once more who would not be a boy? | |
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| Thus bending o’er the vessel’s laving side, | 10 |
| To gaze on Dian’s wave-reflected sphere, | |
| The soul forgets her schemes of Hope and Pride, | |
| And flies unconscious o’er each backward year. | |
| None are so desolate but something dear, | |
| Dearer than self, possesses or possessed | 15 |
| A thought, and claims the homage of a tear; | |
| A flashing pang! of which the weary breast | |
| Would still, albeit in vain, the heavy heart divest. | |
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| To sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fell, | |
| To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene, | 20 |
| Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell, | |
| And mortal foot hath ne’er or rarely been; | |
| To climb the trackless mountain all unseen, | |
| With the wild flock that never needs a fold; | |
| Alone o’er steeps and foaming falls to lean,— | 25 |
| This is not solitude; ’t is but to hold | |
| Converse with Nature’s charms, and view her stores unrolled. | |
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| But midst the crowd, the hum, the shock of men | |
| To hear, to see, to feel, and to possess, | |
| And roam along, the world’s tired denizen, | 30 |
| With none who bless us, none whom we can bless; | |
| Minions of splendor shrinking from distress! | |
| None that, with kindred consciousness endued, | |
| If we were not, would seem to smile the less | |
| Of all that flattered, followed, sought, and sued; | 35 |
| This is to be alone; this, this is solitude! | |
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