Crowded places, I shunned them as noises too rude / And flew to the silence of sweet solitude.

For Nature is love, and finds haunts for true love, Where nothing can hear or intrude; It hides from the eagle and joins with the dove, In beautiful green solitude.

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows, My friends forsake me like a memory lost; I am the self-consumer of my woes, They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost; And yet I am, and live with shadows tost.

The present is the funeral of the past, And man the living sepulchre of life.

So dull and dark are the November days. The lazy mist high up the evening curled, And now the morn quite hides in smoke and haze; The place we occupy seems all the world.

Burning hot is the ground, liquid gold is the air; Whoever looks round sees Eternity there.

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, Into the living sea of waking dreams, Where there is neither sense of life or joys, But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems; And e'en the dearest--that I love the best-- Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.