Poor Loneliness and lovely Solitude
Were sisters who inhabited a wood;
And one was fair as cressets in the skies,
The other freckle-faced, and full of sighs.
And Solitude had builded them a bower
Set round with bergamot and gillyflower;
Wide windows, and a door without a latch,
Below the brier and the woodbine thatch.
They lived like birds, on rustic crusts and crumbs,
Mushrooms, and blackberries, and honey-combs,
Cream in a bowl and butter in a crock;
The moon for lantern, and the sun for clock.
Decorum did simplicity enrich;
A Parian Diana in a niche
Over the windows, and a harp between
With strings like gilded rain against the green;
Trifles their parents, Austerity and Peace,
Had bought in Paris, or picked up in Greece.
An infant's skull, which Loneliness had found
Without the churchyard, in unhallowed ground,
Under a little cross of blackthorn sticks;
For Solitude an ivory crucifix
Carved in a dream perversely Byzantine;
A silver mirror of a chaste design,
And Plato in white vellum; in levant
Shelley and Donne, presented by her aunt
(Who might have been a Muse, had she been got
By Jupiter, but unluckily was not.)
And Solitude was grave and beautiful
As the evening star, but Loneliness was dull;
And one was wild and holy, one was tame;
About their appointed tasks they went and came
One like a moth, the other like a mouse.
Like a new pin the cool and ordered house;
For lightly its divided burden fell;
But one did worse, the other very well.
For whatsoever Solitude had touched
Was clean, and not a finger of her smutched;
But oft the milk had soured in the pan
To see poor Loneliness morose and wan;
And when she polished copper she became
Listless as smoke against the augmented flame;
And when she walked below the lucent sun
Her freckled face was dust, her hair was dun;
And still with meek affection she pursued
Her lovelier twin, her sister Solitude,
Who, while that she was pitiful and kind,
Preferred the forest, and her private mind.
One day this nymph escaped into the dawn
And fled away, contemptuous as a fawn;
And through the hours she ran like fire and steel;
Imagination followed her at heel;
And what delights she tasted as she roved
Are metaphysical, and remain unproved.
Then Loneliness fell to weeping like a fool;
And wandered forth, because the wind was cool,
To dry her tears beneath a bracken fan;
And found a sleeping demigod or man;
And gazed entranced upon the creature's face,
Which was adorable and commonplace.
And when she saw him laid upon the leaves
Her hair was silver-gold as barley sheaves;
And when she saw his eyelids folded thin
Her eyes were amber, and with stars therein;
And when she saw his eyelashes unclose
Her freckles were the dew upon a rose;
Yea, all her freckles melted with her heart
To sun and dew, which drew his lids apart
As though the sun were shining in his eyes;
And she was fair as cressets in the skies;
And when she left the shadow of the wood
She was far lovelier than Solitude.
Let you believe, let me unsurely guess
This wonder wrought upon poor Loneliness;
But what was done, to what intrinsic end,
And whether by a brother or a friend,
And whether by a lover or a foe,
Let men inquire, and gods obscurely know.