SOLITUDE.
How sweet the yoke of chosen solitude
With the allurements of the town at hand
To take or leave according to the mood!
How easy to withstand!
We let the buskin'd stage expend its wit,
The panorama of the streets go by,
The orator declaim unheard, and sit
At home in lonely joy.
The morning columns that with breakfast come,
Fill'd with the living drama of the age—
Even them we can afford to leave for some
Elizabethan page.
But solitude afar from all that moves
The wheels of history, the hearts of men,
Beyond the range of life's accustomed grooves—
How hard the yoke is then!
We do not live, but longingly exist
Upon the slow combustion of the heart,
Leisure unused, the ends of being miss'd,
Craving the world apart!
Ah, then, the worthiest volume poorly meets
Our fancied wants; we hanker after news,
And lay down Shakspere for the tatter'd sheets
That wrapt our last new shoes.
