Lone

“ There is a strange fascination in the idea, "Wheresoever my horse wanders there is my home;" stronger perhaps is that thought than any allurement of wealth, or power, or possession given us by life. Nor can after-time ever wholly remove it; midst the smoke and hum of cities, midst the prayer of churches, in street or salon, it needs but little cause to recall again to the wanderer the image of the immense meadows where, far away at the portals of the setting sun, lies the Great Lone Land. ”

“ I don't like this rough life for you and the little one. We've had a good winter this last year at Lone Rock, and you've made home home to a man, even out here. But it's not the right place for a woman and a bairn. ”

“ For me it is such pleasure to be here—to leave for a while the loneliness and chill of my narrow place! But you, so rich in all things, free and happy—how should it matter to you if a voice in the dark speaks or is silent? ”

“ Loneliness
This loneliness encaged in me
That has no curious heart for life,
No ribald blood, no treacherous flesh
Nor golden wickedness of song,
This loneliness that prays in me,
Is it not somewhat like a nun? ”

“ My silent rivulets, over-brimmed.
What, I have secrets from you? Yes.
But, visiting Sea, your love doth press
⁠And reach in further than you know,
⁠And fills all these; and, when you go,
There's loneliness in loneliness. ”

“ He experienced that heart-probing, fiery sense of dangerous loneliness, which sometimes assails the courage of a solitary adventurer in an unexplored country. The sight of a man's face—he felt—of any man's face, would have been a profound relief. ”

“ Many a able-bodied man wi’ a family,” he added impressively. “’Tis enough an’ more than enough for you, a lone man wi’ no one dependin’ on ye, so to speak.”
“Ay, I am a lone man, I am that,” agreed the shepherd warmly. “An’ why am I a lone man? When I worked for ye first, p. 10after your father died, says you, ‘We must have a single man,’ says you. ‘I must have ye on the spot,’ says you, ‘with all them dumb things about the place to see to.’ So I give up walkin’ wi’ the maid I was coortin’ an’ give up the notion o’ gettin’ wed. ”

“ I had lone, schooled myself to be oblivious to pain. I had neither doubts nor fears. All the content of my mind seemed to be an absolute faith in the overlordship of the mind. This passivity was almost dream-like, and yet, in its way, it was positive almost to a pitch of exaltation. ”

“ The coming of daylight dispelled his fears but increased his loneliness. The naked earth, which so shortly before had been so populous; thrust his loneliness more forcibly upon him. It did not take him long to make up his mind. ”

“ And then I slew him, as he stood there, in the face of all the people. Even I, Lone Chief, with my own hands, slew Skolka, the shaman, in the face of all the people. And when a murmuring arose, I cried aloud--"
"With a voice like thunder," prompted Mutsak.
"Ay, with a voice like thunder I cried aloud: 'Behold, O ye people! I am Lone Chief, slayer of Skolka, the false shaman! Alone among men, have I passed down through the gateway of Death and returned again. Mine eyes have looked upon the unseen things. Mine ears have heard the unspoken words. Greater am I than Skolka, the shaman. ”

“ And the fireside by which you sit, now merry and noisy enough, may grow lonely,—lonely with the second loneliness, not the hopeful solitude of youth looking forward, but the desponding loneliness of age looking back. ”

“ On the bleak mountain thus I was the pitifulest atom of loneliest humanity, yet felt no loneliness. The face of the earth frowned in angry fury, the awfulness of the raging elements dwarfed all else to utter annihilation. ”

“ Yet I feel rarely rarefied, heavily rarefied, wornly rarefied in this living-place where Loneliness burns me in strong fire and where I can shake my life like a hollow gourd and hear the eerie rattling sound I make in it. ”

“ Then again, lose yourself in the desert on a dark night when for once in a way the stars are dim or obscured by clouds, and you will realize as you never before have done, the awesome reality of the sense of loneliness—a feeling which can only be compared to that felt by the hunted criminal hiding in a city, and against whom every man’s hand is raised. ”

“ And at other times it was just beautiful and still, and seemed listening to what the forest was saying— and once or twice, I thought, it might be praying. Loneliness makes a fellow foolish, you know. With the going of the sun my blue flower would always fold its petals and go to sleep, like a little child tired out by the day’s play, and after that I would feel terribly lonely. ”

“ It is the loneliness which men are wont to associate with death: when the Eastern ceases for this—dialogue—he has attained Heaven, absorption into the Divine. ... Oh! the loneliness! Oh! the joy of loneliness and solitude; the joy of aloofness, each for each. The Soul and God together, alone together side by side, and at last, alone and one ... one Great Soul. For our souls are carrier pigeons, homing to God. ”

“ Then, although seeming alone, it has companionship, it is not lonely. And there are hours of heart-felt loneliness, though surrounded by a crowd, when no look, word or touch of another can reach our hearts, so separated are we. ”

“ She had become afraid of the loneliness of her room and of herself, a loneliness which in other ways had become so dear to her. Now she was seeking something more than spaciousness of air and forest; but the road, in which a few people were walking, made her keep herself under control. ”

“ Our meeting was coincidence, for we were hunting in a region where distances are measured by hours and the chance of running across white men very rare. For many days our nightly camps were pitched in spots of beauty where the loneliness is akin to the loneliness of the Egyptian Desert. ”

“ The loneliness, the solemnity, the beauty, and the deep repose of this wilderness have a charm which is all their own for the bruised spirit of men who have fought and failed in the struggle for life in the great world ”

“ Whenever we look up there and think of you poor fellows shut up in that isolated spot we pity you immensely and wonder how you can bear the dreadful loneliness of it. Down here we are so much better off. ”

“ Does it not seem to you that if my spirit comes out of its grave at night and finds none but wolves and bears to call to, it will experience a loneliness far worse than the pangs of death? Think of it! In this whole land, not one human spirit! To wander through the grove and the camp, and find only emptiness and silence forever! ”

“ But as the wayfarer from out of the snow and wind feels his limbs numb and frozen in the hearth's warmth, so, having learned that one might speak, be understood, be comforted, that one might love and be beloved,—the misery of loneliness was revealed to me. ”

“ The living creatures are gone. I see the land desolate, and I suffer unspeakable sadness. Sometimes I wake in the night and I feel as though I should suffocate from the pressure of this awful feeling of loneliness. ”

“ There are two Comrades, Love and Loneliness,
Perhaps Christ enters when we touch the last.
Loneliness waiteth long, until we give
The last glad hold we have on life, and I—
I have not given yet my hold on life. ”

“ I'll live on lonely shores and there forget, Or tell myself that there has never been The gay and tender courage of Lucette, The little loving arms of Jacqueline. A man lonely upon a lonely isle, Sometimes I'll look towards the North and smile To think they're happy, and they both believe I died for France, and that I lie at rest ”

“ Images and observations which could easily be disposed of by a glance, a smile, an exchange of opinion, will occupy him unbearably, sink deep into the silence, become full of meaning, become life, adventure, emotion. Loneliness ripens the eccentric, the daringly and estrangingly beautiful, the poetic. But loneliness also ripens the perverse, the disproportionate, the absurd, and the illicit.—So, the things he had met with on the trip, the ugly old fop with his twaddle about sweethearts, the lawbreaking gondolier who was cheated of his pay, still left the traveller uneasy. ”

“ He becomes familiar with the beauty of loneliness. Whispered to by the myriad tongues of the wilderness, he learns the language of the barren and the uncouth, and can read the hieroglyphics of haggard gum-trees, blown into odd shapes, distorted with fierce hot winds, or cramped with cold nights, when the Southern Cross freezes in a cloudless sky of icy blue. ”

“ But may come after it a wilder Loneliness of being free, fearfully free: flavored with the heaviness of rain at night and draggledness of beggar-women’s skirts.—
Meanwhile bright and black among Doors and Door-knobs and Curtains and Tables burns the fire of this Loneliness with strong, strong flame. It is mystic agony. There is no thinking in it. There is an utterly irrational wish, an aching yearning for people: not people to see, or listen to, or talk to, but—humanness I could feel with familiarity. ”

“ Many ways are there in which loneliness may be personified or illustrated: the widow weeping upon the tomb of her only child, a blind man in a crowd, a prostrate figure on some wide spread of midnight moor, over whose vague and distant edge a red eye of moon is glancing under a lid of black cloud. In many ways may loneliness be represented, but there is no expression of it that equals, to my mind, the abandoned ship. Is it because the movement of the sea communicates a fancy of life to the vessel? ”

“ When love has gone from us is loneliness.
The crying of a little child at night
In the big dark is crowding loneliness.
Slow death of woman on a Kansas farm;
The ache of those who think beyond their time;
Pain unassuaged of isolated lives,—
All this is loneliness.
Oh, we who are one body of one soul!
Great soul of man born into social form! ”

“ Sometimes we spent our winter afternoons of enforced leisure in long walks through country roads which lay empty to the eye for miles. They gave one a sense of loneliness which colored thought, not in any sentimental way, but in a manner very natural and real. ”

“ And it seemed to her that a stranger there would be very lonely, not knowing the ways or the speech of the simple folk, careless, perhaps, of his own comfort, and only listening to the plashing of the sea and the incessant rain on the bushes and on the pebbles of the beach. ”

“ Loneliness garbed in a mantle of merging grey sea and grey sky, trimmed with the spires and turrets of grey and seemingly unsouled ships, whose presence in the blue and gold days was as that of old friends well met, but which now seem to be ragged rents in the solemn dress of Loneliness, reminding one of a derelict’s slovenly covering held together over a hopeless breast by an old gold brooch—perhaps the gift of a mother or handed down from bygone ages. ”

“ Go where you will, the rocks will retain no impress of your footsteps; dwell where you please, the mountains are your only witnesses, and they gaze with equal indifference on your presence and on your absence. But the fitfulness of human habitation among them, the absence of any effort to civilize them, to make them shelter man and minister to his wants, gives them an air of stubborn hopeless sterility, [88] very imposing, very repelling. Gradually the loneliness will strike into your heart with a feeling almost akin to horror. ”

“ The waters splash with a melancholy sound, the tables and chairs are gone from under the platane tree and the lovers—let us hope they are fled together. The spirit of loneliness dwells where man has been and is not—in a tenantless house, in the chamber of death, by the embers of a camp fire in a vast wilderness. ”

“ She really could not bear that.
“This is such a big lonely place,” she said slowly, as if she were turning matters over in her mind. “The house is lonely, and the park is lonely, and the gardens are lonely. ”

“ The loneliness gave him courage; when the moon set, the night being clear, he explored further and satisfied himself that there were no human beings, except the occupants of the tower, living on these rocks. ”

“ Can any of us look back to the earlier days of our mortal pilgrimage and remember the helpless sense of desolation and loneliness caused by being forced to go off to the stillness and darkness of a solitary bed far from all the beloved voices and employments and sights of life? ”

“ The wilderness seemed to press in on me. That's what drives men mad sometimes. It isn't the solitude or the loneliness exactly. It's the constant pressure of forces that can be felt but not described. ”

“ He looked up at the tired, dull faces of those old dwellings that loomed across the way with blind and lightless windows, sleeping without suspicion that he had stolen in among them—the grim and deadly thing that walked by night, the Lone Wolf, creature of pillage and rapine, scourged slave of that Self which knew no law. ”

“ The streets were utterly deserted, and the loneliness, as they looked below, made them feel the more intensely not only the emotions which swelled within them, but the undefined and electric sympathy which, in uniting them, divided them from the world. ”

“ I pictured vast prairies and deserts where we should be alone together, far from the haunts of man or animal or perhaps of any living thing—times when it would depend upon her to bear me on to civilization. ”

“ But worst of all was the awful loneliness from which I suffered. It seemed to me as though there were no other living thing in all the Universe and never had been and never would be any other living thing. I felt as though I were the Universe rushing solitary through space for ages upon ages in a frantic search for fellowship, and finding none. ”

“ Who knows what true loneliness is—not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. ”