Via Solitaria

By Henry W. Longfellow

Alone, I walked the peopled city,
Where each seems happy with his own;
Oh! friends, I ask not for your pity—
I walk alone.

No more for me yon lake rejoices,
Though moved by loving airs of June.
Oh! birds, your sweet and piping voices
Are out of tune.

In vain for me the elm tree arches
Its plumes in many a feathery spray,
In vain the evening’s starry marches
And sunlit day.

In vain your beauty, Summer flowers;
Ye cannot greet these cordial eyes;
They gaze on other fields than ours—
On other skies.

The gold is rifled from the coffer,
The blade is stolen from the sheath;
Life has but one more boon to offer,
And that is—Death.

Yet well I know the voice of Duty,
And, therefore, life and health must crave,
Though she who gave the world its beauty
Is in her grave.

I live, O lost one! for the living
Who drew their earliest life from thee,
And wait, until with glad thanksgiving
I shall be free.

For life to me is as a station
Wherein apart a traveler stands—
One absent long from home and nation,
In other lands;

And I, as he who stands and listens,
Amid the twilight’s chill and gloom,
To hear, approaching in the distance,
The train for home.

For death shall bring another mating,
Beyond the shadows of the tomb,
On yonder shore a bride is waiting
Until I come.

In yonder field are children playing,
And there—oh, vision of delight!—
I see the child and mother straying
In robes of white.

Thou, then, the longing heart that breakest,
Stealing the treasures one by one,
I’ll call Thee blessed when Thou makest
The parted—one.