Famous Solitude Poems by Famous Poets

These are examples of famous Solitude poems written by some of the greatest and most-well-known modern and classical poets. PoetrySoup is a great educational poetry resource of famous solitude poems. These examples illustrate what a famous solitude poem looks like and its form, scheme, or style (where appropriate).

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A Song Of Despair

...u.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, ho...Read more of this...
by Neruda, Pablo


A young heart with an old soul

...How can there be peace?
How can I be in the depths of solitude
When there are two inside of me?
This duo in me causes the perfect opportunity
To learn and live twice as fast
As those who accept simplicity... ...Read more of this...
by Shakur, Tupac

Endymion: Book IV

...lk of men;
Before the first of Druids was a child;--
Long didst thou sit amid our regions wild
Rapt in a deep prophetic solitude.
There came an eastern voice of solemn mood:--
Yet wast thou patient. Then sang forth the Nine,
Apollo's garland:--yet didst thou divine
Such home-bred glory, that they cry'd in vain,
"Come hither, Sister of the Island!" Plain
Spake fair Ausonia; and once more she spake
A higher summons:--still didst thou betake
Thee to thy native hopes. O thou hast...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

Four Riddles

...d One (we name him not) that flies the flowers,
That dreads the dances, and that shuns the salads,
They doom to pass in solitude the hours,
Writing acrostic-ballads. 

How late it grows! The hour is surely past
That should have warned us with its double knock?
The twilight wanes, and morning comes at last -
"Oh, Uncle, what's o'clock?" 

The Uncle gravely nods, and wisely winks.
It MAY mean much, but how is one to know?
He opens his mouth - yet out of it, methinks,
No words o...Read more of this...
by Carroll, Lewis

Frost at Midnight

...wlet's cry
Came loud---and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
`Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blu...Read more of this...
by Coleridge, Samuel Taylor


Howl

...of colossal steamwhistles,
who barreled down the highways of the past journeying to each other’s hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had a vision to find out Eternity,
who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded & loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Tim...Read more of this...
by Ginsberg, Allen

Humanitad

...vil thing through thy fair pleasaunce range?

Nay, nay, thou art the same: 'tis I who seek
To vex with sighs thy simple solitude,
And because fruitless tears bedew my cheek
Would have thee weep with me in brotherhood;
Fool! shall each wronged and restless spirit dare
To taint such wine with the salt poison of own despair!

Thou art the same: 'tis I whose wretched soul
Takes discontent to be its paramour,
And gives its kingdom to the rude control
Of what should be its servitor...Read more of this...
by Wilde, Oscar

Hyperion

...riefs
That unbelief has not a space to breathe.
Saturn, sleep on:---O thoughtless, why did I
Thus violate thy slumbrous solitude?
Why should I ope thy melancholy eyes?
Saturn, sleep on! while at thy feet I weep."

 As when, upon a tranced summer-night,
Those green-rob'd senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,
Save from one gradual solitary gust
Which comes upon the silence, and dies off,
As if the...Read more of this...
by Keats, John

I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

...r oft, when on my couch I lie 
In vacant or in pensive mood, 
They flash upon that inward eye 
Which is the bliss of solitude; 
And then my heart with pleasure fills, 
And dances with the daffodils. 
...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

Lara

...eir evil judgment augur'd of the worst, 
And each long restless night, and silent mood, 
Was traced to sickness, fed by solitude: 
And though his lonely habits threw of late 
Gloom o'er his chamber, cheerful was his gate; 
For thence the wretched ne'er unsoothed withdrew, 
For them, at least, his soul compassion knew. 
Cold to the great, contemptuous to the high, 
The humble pass'd not his unheeding eye; 
Much he would speak not, but beneath his roof 
They found asylum oft, a...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey

...e a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling place
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,
Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,
And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance—
If I should be where I no more can hear
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence—wilt thou then forget
That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stoo...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

Paradise Lost: Book 09

...ll younger hands ere long 
Assist us; But, if much converse perhaps 
Thee satiate, to short absence I could yield: 
For solitude sometimes is best society, 
And short retirement urges sweet return. 
But other doubt possesses me, lest harm 
Befall thee severed from me; for thou knowest 
What hath been warned us, what malicious foe 
Envying our happiness, and of his own 
Despairing, seeks to work us woe and shame 
By sly assault; and somewhere nigh at hand 
Watches, no doubt, w...Read more of this...
by Milton, John

The Bride of Abydos

...listen and reply 
To thoughts with which my heart beat high 
Were irksome — for whate'er my mood, 
In sooth I love not solitude; 
I on Zuleika's slumber broke, 
And as thou knowest that for me 
Soon turns the Haram's grating key, 
Before the guardian slaves awoke 
We to the cypress groves had flown, 
And made earth, main, and heaven our own! 
There linger'd we, beguil'd too long 
With Mejnoun's tale, or Sadi's song, [3] 
Till I, who heard the deep tambour [4] 
Beat thy Divan...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Dream

...o'er his brow there came
The selfsame aspect and the quivering shock
That in the antique Oratory shook
His bosom in its solitude; and then— 
As in that hour—a moment o'er his face
The tablet of unutterable thoughts
Was traced—and then it faded as it came,
And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke
The fitting vows, but heard not his own words,
And all things reeled around him; he could see
Not that which was, nor that which should have been— 
But the old mansion, and the accus...Read more of this...
by Byron, George (Lord)

The Dungeon

...all in our pamper'd mountebanks—  And this is their best cure! uncomforted.   And friendless solitude, groaning and tears.  And savage faces, at the clanking hour,  Seen through the steams and vapour of his dungeon,  By the lamp's dismal twilight! So he lies  Circled with evil, till his very soul  Unmoulds its essence, hopelessly deformed  By sights of ever more deformity!  &nbs...Read more of this...
by Wordsworth, William

The Growth of Love

...

11
There's many a would-be poet at this hour,
Rhymes of a love that he hath never woo'd,
And o'er his lamplit desk in solitude
Deems that he sitteth in the Muses' bower:
And some the flames of earthly love devour,
Who have taken no kiss of Nature, nor renew'd
In the world's wilderness with heavenly food
The sickly body of their perishing power. 

So none of all our company, I boast,
But now would mock my penning, could they see
How down the right it maps a jagged coast;
See...Read more of this...
by Bridges, Robert Seymour

The Lady of the Lake

...ance bore.
     That monk, of savage form and face
     The impending danger of his race
     Had drawn from deepest solitude
     Far in Benharrow's bosom rude.
     Not his the mien of Christian priest,
     But Druid's, from the grave released
     Whose hardened heart and eye might brook
     On human sacrifice to look;
     And much, 't was said, of heathen lore
     Mixed in the charms he muttered o'er.
     The hallowed creed gave only worse
     And deadli...Read more of this...
by Scott, Sir Walter

The Seasons: Winter

..., wint'ry, Horrors, hail! -- With frequent Foot,
Pleas'd, have I, in my cheerful Morn of Life,
When, nurs'd by careless Solitude, I liv'd,
And sung of Nature with unceasing Joy,
Pleas'd, have I wander'd thro' your rough Domains; 
Trod the pure, virgin, Snows, my self as pure:
Heard the Winds roar, and the big Torrent burst:
Or seen the deep, fermenting, Tempest brew'd,
In the red, evening, Sky. -- Thus pass'd the Time,
Till, thro' the opening Chambers of the South, 
Look'd ou...Read more of this...
by Thomson, James

The Triumph of Life

...& were
"Borne onward.--I among the multitude
Was swept; me sweetest flowers delayed not long,
Me not the shadow nor the solitude,
"Me not the falling stream's Lethean song,
Me, not the phantom of that early form
Which moved upon its motion,--but among
"The thickest billows of the living storm
I plunged, and bared my bosom to the clime
Of that cold light, whose airs too soon deform.--
"Before the chariot had begun to climb
The opposing steep of that mysterious dell,
Behold a w...Read more of this...
by Shelley, Percy Bysshe

The Waste Land

...tand nor lie nor sit 
There is not even silence in the mountains
But dry sterile thunder without rain
There is not even solitude in the mountains
But red sullen faces sneer and snarl
From doors of mudcracked houses
 If
there were water
 And no rock
 If there were rock
 And also water
 And water 
 A spring
 A pool among the rock
 If there were the sound of water only
 Not the cicada
 And dry grass singing
 But sound of water over a rock
 Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pi...Read more of this...
by Eliot, T S (Thomas Stearns)

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