Poems on Loneliness
by Sri Chinmoy
~
Smile my heart smile.
You will see loneliness
Nowhere.
***
Do not blame Heaven
And do not blame earth
For your loneliness.
You are travelling the ways of loneliness
Because your mind has not tried to conquer
The darkness of frustration-frown.
***
A doubting mind
Is forced to live
In the prison of loneliness.
***
When our self-offering
Comes to the fore,
Loneliness
Is bound to disappear.
***
My world-oneness-heart
Is a perfect stranger
To loneliness.
***
At times we can feel a sense of loneliness even when we are surrounded by many people. Sri Chinmoy suggests that we feel lonely when use our mind to separate ourselves from other people. It is easy for the mind to be negative and when we are in a negative state of mind our ego comes to the fore, this is when we are likely to feel more lonely. The cure for loneliness is to use the qualities of the heart to stop judging things and to cultivate happiness.
Poems on Loneliness taken from Sri Chinmoy Library
Evening Solace
The human heart has hidden treasures,
In secret kept, in silence sealed;
The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,
Whose charms were broken if revealed.
And days may pass in gay confusion,
And nights in rosy riot fly,
While, lost in Fame’s or Wealth’s illusion,
The memory of the Past may die.
But, there are hours of lonely musing,
Such as in evening silence come,
When, soft as birds their pinions closing,
The heart’s best feelings gather home.
Then in our souls there seems to languish
A tender grief that is not woe;
And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish,
Now cause but some mild tears to flow.
And feelings, once as strong as passions,
Float softly backa faded dream;
Our own sharp griefs and wild sensations,
The tale of others’ sufferings seem.
Oh ! when the heart is freshly bleeding,
How longs it for that time to be,
When, through the mist of years receding,
Its woes but live in reverie !
And it can dwell on moonlight glimmer,
On evening shade and loneliness;
And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer,
Feel no untold and strange distress
Only a deeper impulse given
By lonely hour and darkened room,
To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven,
Seeking a life and world to come.
-Charlotte Bronte
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The Daffodils
I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud
I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
-William Wordsworth
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Bereft
Where had I heard this wind before
Change like this to a deeper roar?
What would it take my standing there for,
Holding open a restive door,
Looking down hill to a frothy shore?
Summer was past and day was past.
Somber clouds in the west were massed.
Out in the porch’s sagging floor,
leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
Blindly struck at my knee and missed.
Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God
–Robert Frost
Desert Places
Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,
And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.
The woods around it have it—it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs.
I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.
And lonely as it is that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it be less—
A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars—on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
–Robert Frost
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Never Alone
Sometimes, O Lord, when I cannot pray,
I sit very still with nothing to say.
But never-the-less, I know you are there;
I whisper your name ’cause I know you care.
You know that I’m troubled with things on my mind,
And you know that I’ve been weak, so often unkind,
But your spirit is with me, right here in this home;
And I know that I never am walking alone.
— Helen Parker
Contributed by Delores T. Turner
