When I was a child, I thought,
Casually, that solitude
Never needed to be sought.
Something everybody had,
Like nakedness, it lay at hand,
Not specially right or specially wrong,
A plentiful and obvious thing
Not at all hard to understand.
Then, after twenty, it became
At once more difficult to get
And more desired; though all the same
More undesirable; for what
You are alone has, to achieve
The rank of fact, to be expressed
In terms of others, or it’s just
A compensating make-believe.
Much better stay in company!
To love you must have someone else,
Giving requires a legatee,
Good neighbours need whole parishfuls
Of folk to do it on; in short,
Our virtues are all social; if,
Deprived of solitude, you chafe,
It’s clear you’re not the virtuous sort.
Viciously, then, I lock my door.
The gas-fire breathes. The wind outside
Ushers in evening rain. Once more
Uncontradicting solitude
Supports me on its giant palm;
And like a sea-anemone
Or simple snail, there cautiously
Unfolds, emerges, what I am.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- Владимир Маяковский – В авто
- When the Assault Was Intended to the City poem – John Milton poems
- The Shadowy Waters: The Harp of Aengus by William Butler Yeats
- To a person, they say, frigid, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem: A celle que l’on fit froide by T. Wignesan
- On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer poem – John Keats poems
- Relations by Sunil Sharma
- Stanzas To Miss Wylie poem – John Keats poems
- Out Of The Window poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- The lords above by Michael Nikoletseas
- Владимир Высоцкий – В белье плотной вязки
- Solitude poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- The Song For Colin by Sara Teasdale
- Владимир Высоцкий – Космонавту Ю. Гагарину
- Song of Poplars poem – Aldous Huxley poems | Poetry Monster
- To A Husband poem – Amy Lowell poems | Poems and Poetry
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).
Philip Arthur Larkin (1922-1985), Commander of the Order of the British Empire, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Cavalier of the Order of the Companions of Honour, was an English poet, novelist, and librarian.