Loneliness

I had abhorred loneliness:
Spirit that creeps about
Bidding conviviality be powerless,
Like some sinister shadow where man is not;
Bordering indefinitely on emptiness,
Until throughout
The sphere of reality we feel
Things are forgot-
Yet by their very absence shout
And construct barriers between
The visionary and the real.

And now in company of loneliness,
Stupid silent paid,
My thoughts are dreams; with wishes guess
To hasten to his hidden lair
Retreating Time;
And yet while Solitude I deem a foe
Unfriendly. to my mood
(Although the parent of this rhyme)
'Tis kind enough to let me know
That less of Man means more of God
And Good.

Kansas Poets
Edited by May William Ward
(New York: Henry Harrison. 1935)
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