Solitude Poem by John Bannister Tabb

Thou wast to me what to the changing year
Its seasons are,-a joy forever new;
What to the night its stars, its heavenly dew,
Its silence; what to dawn its lark-song clear;
To noon, its light-its fleckless atmosphere,
Where ocean and the overbending blue,
In passionate communion, hue for hue,
As one in Love's circumference appear.


O brimming heart, with tears for utterance
Alike of joy and sorrow! lift thine eyes
And sphere the desolation. Love is flown;
And in the desert's widening expanse
Grim Silence, like a sepulchre of stone,
Stands charnelling a soul's funereal sighs.