Alone

In contact, lo! the flint and steel,
By sharp and flame, the thought reveal
That he the metal, she the stone,
Had cherished secretly alone.

Booley Fito.

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran. He is best known for his enigmatic short stories and his satirical lexicon, 'The Devil's Dictionary.' Bierce's literary work often showcased his darkly cynical view of humanity. His disappearance in 1914 while traveling to Mexico remains one of the most famous unsolved mysteries in American literary history.

Ambrose Bierce

With A Book

Ambrose Bierce, Simple Poetry

Piety

Ambrose Bierce, Simple Poetry

Weather

Ambrose Bierce, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Alone

From childhoods hour I have not been
As others were, I have not seen
As others saw, I could not bring
My passions from a common spring,
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow, I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone,
And all I loved, I loved alone,
Thou,in my childhood,in the dawn
Of a most stormy life,was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still,
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolld
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Edgar Allan Poe

Rimer

The rimer quenches his unheeded fires,
The sound surceases and the sense expires.
Then the domestic dog, to east and west,
Expounds the passions burning in his breast.
The rising moon o'er that enchanted land
Pauses to hear and yearns to understand.

Ambrose Bierce

With A Book

Words shouting, singing, smiling, frowning
Sense lacking.
Ah, nothing, more obscure than Browning,
Save blacking.

Ambrose Bierce

By The Hearth-Stone

By the hearth-stone
She sits alone,
    The long night bearing:
With eyes that gleam
Into the dream
    Of the firelight staring.

Low and more low
The dying glow
    Burns in the embers;
She nothing heeds
And nothing needs---
    Only remembers.

Henry John Newbolt

The Thorn

The days of these two years like busy ants
Have gone, confused and happy and distressed,
Rich, yet sad with aching wants,
Crowded, yet lonely and unblessed.

I stare back as they vanish in a swarm,
Seeming how purposeless, how mean and vain,
Till creeping joy and brief alarm
Are gone and prick me not again.

The days are gone, yet still this heart of fire
Smouldering, smoulders on with ancient love;
And the red embers of desire
I would not, oh, nor dare remove!

Where is the bosom my head rested on,
The arms that caught my boy's head, the soft kiss?
Where is the light of your eyes gone?--
For now I know what darkness is....

It is the loneliness, the loneliness,
Since she that brought me here has left me here
With the sharp need o...

John Frederick Freeman

Sonnet XXVIII.

Solo e pensoso i più deserti campi.

HE SEEKS SOLITUDE, BUT LOVE FOLLOWS HIM EVERYWHERE.


    Alone, and lost in thought, the desert glade
Measuring I roam with ling'ring steps and slow;
And still a watchful glance around me throw,
Anxious to shun the print of human tread:
No other means I find, no surer aid
From the world's prying eye to hide my woe:
So well my wild disorder'd gestures show,
And love lorn looks, the fire within me bred,
That well I deem each mountain, wood and plain,
And river knows, what I from man conceal,
What dreary hues my life's fond prospects dim.
Yet whate'er wild or savage paths I've ta'en,
Where'er I wander, love attends me still,
Soft whisp'ring to my soul, and I to him.

ANON., OX., 1795.

Francesco Petrarca