Alone, alone! Life's bitterest loss or gain
Is this: that journeying on ward through the years
We find in all the world no place for tears;
That heart to heart may lean and beat in vain,
And asking, guard the secret of its pain,
Bound in its silent prison by its fears
To waken eyes that see not, rouse deaf ears
That hope of comfort have aforetime slain.

Who has not yearned in such lone agony
To summon back to life some spirit fled?
Deeming in that dear presence he were free
His soul's contemnëd anguish to outspread;
But vain, still vain; it would not, could not be;—
Our worst of woe we tell but to the dead.