God's Closet: Solitude

William Rounseville Alger, The Solitudes of Nature and of Man; or, The Loneliness of Human Life (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1867), 146-148:

To be ignorant of yourself, uneasy and exacting, is to be repulsive no less than miserable. Who would enjoy the world, must move through it detached from it, coming into it from a superior position. He must not be weakly dependent on his fellows, but say to himself, Cannot God, the Universe and I, make my life a rich, self-sufficing thing here in time? To command love we must not be dependent on it; a tragical truth for those who have most need of love. The way to self-sufficingness is the way to public conquest. Happy in the closet is winsome in the crowd. The king of solitude is also the king of society. The reverse, however, is not so true. Many an applauded domineerer of the forum, many a brilliant enchantress of the assembly, when alone, is gnawed by insatiable passions, groans restlessly under the recoil of disappointment. William von Humboldt wrote to his friend Charlotte, «There are few who understand the value of solitude, and how many advantages it offers, especially to women, who are more apt than men to wreck themselves on petty disquietudes.» Self-inspection, self-purification, self-subdual to the conditions of noble being and experience, these form the fitting occupation of our solitary hours. Yet, self must not be the conspicuous object of our contemplation, but great truths and sentiments, moral and religious principles, nature, humanity, and God, the perennial fountains of fresh and pure life. He who follows this course is best qualified to read and interpret the secrets of other souls. He is likewise best fitted to master the world, in the only sense in which a good man will wish to master it. There is no more efficacious mode of observing mankind, than as they are seen from the loop-holes of retreat, and mirrored in our own consciousness. In relation to what is deep and holy, as compared with each other, society is a concealer, solitude a revealer: much, hidden from us in that, is shown to us in this. Amidst a festival the moonlight streams on the wall; but it is unnoticed while the lamps blaze, and the guests crowd and chatter. But when the gossipers go, and the lights are put out then, unveiled of the glare and noise, that silvery illumination from heaven grows visible, and the lonely master of the mansion becomes conscious of the visionary companionship of another world. Solitude is God's closet. It is the sacred auditorium of the secrets of the spiritual world. In this whispering-gallery without walls, tender and reverential spirits are fond of hearkening for those occult tones, divine soliloquies, too deep within or too faintly far ever anywhere else to suffer their shy meanings to be caught. Given a suffciently sensitive intelligence to apprehend the revelations, and every moment of time is surcharged with expressiveness, every spot of space babbles ineffable truths. Silence itself is the conversation of God. We know that in the deepest apparent stillness sounds will betray themselves to those who have finer sense and pay keener attention than ordinary. On the Alps, when everything seems so deathly quiet in the darkness, place your ear at the surface of the ice, and you may catch the tinkle of rivulets running all through the night in the veins and hollows of the frozen hills. Has not the soul too its buried streams of feeling whose movements only the most absorbed listening, in the most hushed moments, can distinguish?

What is it to subject a thing, save to extricate yourself from it, rise apart, and command it from a higher position? To overcome the world it is indispensable first to overlook the world from some private vantage-ground quietly aloof. Would you lift the soul above the petty passions that pester and ravage it, and survey the prizes, the ills, and the frets of ordinary life in their proper perspective of littleness? Accustom yourself to go forth at night, alone, and study the landscape of immensity; gaze up where eternity unveils her starry face and looks down forever without a word. These exercises, their lessons truly learned, so far from making us hate the society of our fellow-creatures, or foolishly suffer from its annoyances, will fit us wisely to enjoy its blessings; be masters of its honors, not victims of its penalties. If to be alone breeds in us a sullen taciturnity, it is proof that we are already bad characters. The more a misanthrope is dissociated from men, the more he loathes them; the longer a pure and loving soul is kept from them, the intenser is his longing to be united with them. None are so bitter and merciless, so abounding in sneers and sarcasms about society and its occupants, as those most thoroughly familiarized and hardened in its routine.

Realms Of Peace And Love

From Georg Friedrich Händel's Jephtha, verses (libretto) by Rev. Thomas Morell:

        In gentle murmurs will I mourn,
        as mourns the mate‐forsaken dove:
        And sighing wish thy dear return
        to liberty and lasting love. [...]

        the sight of thee, my love,
        drives darkness and despair.
        Again I live; in thy sweet smiles I live,
        as in thy father’s ever‐watchful care
        our wretched nation feels new life, new joy.
        O haste, and make my happiness complete! [...]

        Dull delay, in piercing anguish,
        bids thy faithful lover languish.
        While he pants for bliss in vain.
        Oh! With gentle smiles relieve me;
        let no more false hope deceive me,
        nor vain fears inflict a pain. [...]

        How dark, O Lord, are thy decrees!
        All hid from mortal sight!
        All our joys to sorrow turning,
        and our triumphs into mourning,
        as the night succeeds the day;
        no certain bliss, no solid peace,
        we mortals know on earth below.
        Yet on this maxim still obey:
        whatever is, is right.

        Farewell, ye limpid springs and floods,
        ye flow'ry meads and leafy woods;
        farewell, thou busy world, where reign
        short hours or joy, and years of pain.
        Brighter scenes I seek above,
        in the realms of peace and love.

Conversation With The Dead

Letter from Alexander Pope to Mr. Gay, October 1, 1730:

 

I AM something like the sun at this season, withdrawing from the world, but meaning it mighty well, and resolving to shine whenever I can again. But I fear the clouds of a long winter will overcome me to such a degree, that any body will take a farthing candle for a better guide, and more serviceable company. My friends may remember my brighter days, but will think (like the Irish-man) that the moon is a better thing when once I am gone. I do not say this with any allusion to my poetical capacity as a son of Apollo, but in my companionable one, (if you will suffer me to use a phrase of the Earl of Clarendon's,) for I shall see or be seen of few of you this winter. I am grown too faint to do any good, or to give any pleasure. I not only, as Dryden finely says, feel my notes decay as a poet, but feel my spirits flag as a companion, and shall return again to where I first began, my books. I have been putting my library in order, and enlarging the chimney in it, with equal intention to warm my mind and body, if I can, to some life. A friend (a woman friend, God help me!) with whom I have spent three or four hours a day these fifteen years, advised me to pass more time in my studies: I reflected, she must have found some reason for this admonition, and concluded she would complete all her kindnesses to me by returning me to the employment I am fittest for; conversation with the dead, the old, and the worm-eaten.

 

Desolating Loss

Herman Hooker, Uses of Adversity, and the Provisions of Consolation (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1850), 105-7, 109-10:

We had a friend loved and lovely. He had genius and learning. He had all qualities, great and small, blending in a most attractive whole—a character as much to be loved as admired, as truly gentle as it was great, and so combining opposite excellences, that each was beautified by the other. Between him and her who survives him there was a reciprocity of taste and sympathy—a living in each other, so that her thoughts seemed but the pictures of his—her mind but a glass that showed the very beauty that looked into it, or rather became itself that beauty—dying in his dying she did not all die. Her love, the heart's animation, lifted her up; her sense of loss was merged for a while in her love and confidence of his good estate. In strong and trusting thoughts of him as a happy spirit, and of God as his and her portion, she rested as in a cloud. A falling from this elevation was truly a coming to one's self from God—a leaving of heaven for earth. Let her tell the rest in words as beautiful as they are true to nature: «My desolating loss I realise more and more. For many weeks his peaceful and triumphant departure left such an elevating influence on my mind, that I could only think of him as a pure and happy spirit. But now my feelings have become more selfish, and I long for the period to arrive, when I may lie down by his side, and be reunited in a nobler and more enduring union than even that which was ours here.» [...]

If there is anything about us which good hearts will reverence, it is our grief on the loss of those we love. It is a condition in which we seem to be smitten by a Divine hand, and thus made sacred. It is a grief, too, which greatly enriches the heart, when rightly borne. There may be no rebellion of the will, the sweetest sentiments towards God and our fellow-beings may be deepened, and still the desolation caused in the treasured sympathies and hopes of the heart gives a new colour to the entire scene of life. The dear affections which grew out of the consanguinities and connexions of life, next to those we owe to God, are the most sacred of our being; and if the hopes and revelations of a future state did not come to our aid, our grief would be immoderate and inconsolable, when these relations are broken by death.

Without You

A sonnet, Nature, by Luís de Camões (1524-1580), translated by William Baer (Selected Sonnets, University of Chicago Press, 2005, 40-41):

            The beauty of the sweet, fresh mountains here,
            the shade of the green chestnut trees, the pace
            of all the gently crawling streams, this place
            where all one's sadness seems to disappear.

            The hoarse sounds of the sea, the lands that lie
            below, the sun hiding near the hills, the last
            of the lingering cattle slowly moving past,
            the clouds still gently warring in the sky.

            But, finally, all these beauties of nature, pouring
            forth their various splendors, only create
            harsh fresh wounds since you're not here with me.

            Without you, everything is disgusting, and boring;
            without you, I feel, even within this great
            natural happiness, the greatest possible misery.

            A fermosura desta fresca serra
            e a sombra dos verdes castanheiros,
            o manso caminhar destes ribeiros,
            donde toda a tristeza se desterra;

            o rouco som do mar, a estranha terra,
            o esconder do sol pelos outeiros,
            o recolher dos gados derradeiros,
            das nuvens pelo ar a branda guerra;

            enfim, tudo o que a rara natureza
            com tanta variedade nos of'rece,
            me está, se não te vejo, magoando.

            Sem ti, tudo me enoja e me avorrece;
            sem ti, perpetuamente estou passando,
            nas mores alegrias, mór tristeza.