Blest solitude, be with me; even now, take me
into your dream, receive me there.
Let others quit me, do not you forsake me;
embosom me, without a care.
Thus to have lingered where you still are haunting
at Kisasszond, is to feel nothing wanting,
delight in such a place to roam,
and for a poet to feel at home.
Here in the dell and dingle seldom footed
reviving shadows shelter me;
among the deep-grown hornbeams mossy-rooted,
the stream sings in its purity.
From hill to hill naiads of pool and runnel
find homes in bulrush tents, and none will
catch sight of them swimming along
but such as live for thought, or song.
The sylphid Moon arising with soft splendour
brightens the pale-gold beech-tree boles;
still night's good angel, by that beauty tender
cool-clad, the evening's veil unrolls.*
My gentle solitude, in such scenes joying,
such time and space as these so well employing,
I pray you, often bear
my soul to comfort there.
Kings' places you do not greatly care for,
castles with all their grand old power,
when you chance into them, are your horror; therefore,
you bring forth troubles that devour.
Then you are lost to life while round you wrangle
fearsome disputes, which all peace would strangle.
What you would give, the great world rates
as nothing worth; yourself, it hates.
Misers would have your company; but coldly
you punish those for their dull thought.
Ambition's sons with all their vaunts you boldly
fling to the tumult they had sought.
From battle's bugle-calls amazed a-flying,
from crowded cities' walls and multiplying,
only there pleased, sweet, to live,
meadowy, cottaged, sensitive.
The safety of the lonely ones and grieving
only in your sacred forests dwells,
where those whose sadness may at times achieving
Heaven's voice respond to miracles.
You, solitude, befriend the child of sorrows
who has rejected all the world's tomorrows,
or whom the world has cheated -
and whom you have well treated.
You, spirit, were and are the one creator
of such as made some ascend
(in body small) to wisdom, ever greater,
and these as characters have without end
into eternal greatness brought. Your touch
brings out the poet lightening-like in the dark,
when he imagines such so much
that lay beyond your farthest mark.
Divinest, among all the rest, I longing
at many moments sigh - a shade,
wishing his friend, among his trials thronging
to listen and be well repaid -
innocently indeed you call me,
and utterly, profoundly your words thrall me,
for faith is what you have, and are,
from the false modern world so far.
Consider in what discord, in what crashing
the days of arrogant mortals swirl,
from crag to crag like the fierce waters flashing
where the Rhine's currents hurl.
When the immortal veils of solitude are shielding
our quiet hours, like night's dews they are yielding
to time, serenely, with deep peace,
and we may live so, and so cease.
Then even when my eyes their latest
glimpse through the death-veil, then
some way assure me in the dusk thou, thou awaitest,
when my eyes close, look even then!
Yet come with me into my burial, lead me
where only loneliness and ignorance precede me;
there also, in that quiet space,
be my good angel, to my grace.
Blest solitude, upon thy breast so gathered,
I have my last of tears to shed;
with you in dreams past ending, later fathered,
my painful world will all be dead.
Blest solitude, I hail thee, my true treasure,
when the grave otherwise is all my measure.
And when shall that become my fate?
Blest solitude, be yet my mate!
