To sit on rocks, to muse o'er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene,

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;
This is not solitude; 'tis but to hold

Converse with nature's charms, and view her stores unroll'd. .

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,
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 flatter'd, follow'd, sought and sued;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

Byron: Childe Harold.

If the chosen soul could never be alone,
In deep mid-silence, open-doored to God,
No greatness ever had been dreamed or done;
Among dull hearts a prophet never grew;
The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude.

Lowell.

What matter if I stand alone?

I wait with joy the coming years;
My heart shall reap where it hath sown,
And garner up its fruit of tears.

John Burroughs: Waiting.

Sorrow; see Affliction, Grief, and Melancholy.

Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o’erfraught heart, and bids it break.
Shakespeare: Macbeth.

Alas! I have not words to tell my grief;
To vent my sorrow would be some relief;
Light sufferings give us leisure to complain;
We groan, but cannot speak, in greater pain.
Dryden: Palamon and Arcite.

Sorrow preys upon

Its solitude, and nothing more diverts it
From its sad visions of the other world
Than calling it at moments back to this;
The busy have no time for tears.

Never morning wore

Byron: Two Foscari.

To evening, but some heart did break.

Tennyson: In Memoriam.

But O! for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!

Tennyson: Break, Break, Break.

There is no flock, however watched and tended,
But one dead lamb is there!

There is no fireside, howsoe'er defended,

But has one vacant chair.

Longfellow: Resignation.

The day is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;

The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold, and dark, and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the moldering Past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Longfellow: The Rainy Day.

Soul; see Futurity and Immortality.

He had kept

The whiteness of his soul, and thus men o'er him

wept.

Byron: Childe Harold.

Let there be many windows in your soul,
That all the glory of the universe

May beautify it. Not the narrow pane

Of one poor creed can catch the radiant rays
That shine from countless sources.

What ye lift upon the bier
Is not worth a wistful tear.
'Tis an empty sea-shell,-one
Out of which the pearl is gone;
The shell is broken, it lies there;
The pearl, the all, the soul, is here.
'Tis an earthen jar, whose lid
Allah sealed, the while it hid
That treasure of his treasury,
A mind that loved him; let it lie!

Anonymous.

Let the shard be earth's once more,
Since the gold shines in his store!

Edwin Arnold: After Death in Arabia.

Our echoes roll from soul to soul,
And grow for ever and for ever.

Tennyson: The Bugle Song.

Let us cry, "All good things

Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh

helps soul!"

Browning: Rabbi Ben Ezra.

Thy body at its best,

How far can that project thy soul on its lone way?

Browning: Rabbi Ben Ezra.

Wander at will,

Day after day,—
Wander away,
Wandering still—

Soul that canst soar!
Body may slumber:

Body shall cumber
Soul-flight no more.

Browning: La Saisiaz.

Silence and solitude, the soul's best friends.

Longfellow: Michael Angelo.

It is the Soul's prerogative, its fate,
To shape the outward to its own estate.
If right itself, then, all around is well;
If wrong, it makes of all without a hell.

So multiplies the Soul its joys or pain,
Gives out itself, itself takes back again.
Transformed by thee, the world hath but one face.
R. H. Dana: Thoughts on the Soul.

Speech, Language, Words; see Thought.
-Where Nature's end of language is declin'd,
And men talk only to conceal the mind.

Young: Love of Fame.

Rude am I in my speech

And little bless'd with the soft phrase of peace.

Shakespeare: Othello.

Apt words have power to 'suage

The tumors of a troubled mind;

And are as balm to fester'd wounds.

Milton: Samson Agonistes.

Speech is the golden harvest that followeth the flowering of thought.

Tupper: Proverbial Philosophy.

Speech is but broken light upon the depth
Of the unspoken; even your loved words
Float in the larger meaning of your voice
As something dimmer.

George Eliot: Spanish Gypsy.

My words are only words, and moved
Upon the topmost froth of thought.

Tennyson: In Memoriam.

Fit language there is none

For the heart's deepest things.

Lowell: Legend of Brittany.