The Solitary by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The speaker asks whether someone can live among others without caring for them. A man unable to love suffers more deeply than a hunted outcast; his smiles and sociability conceal sorrow, while he longs for death yet fears it.
By Percy Bysshe Shelley · Genre: Romantic Poetry, Lyric Poetry · 212 words
First lines
1.
Dar'st thou amid the varied multitude / To live alone, an isolated thing? / To see the busy beings round thee spring, / And care for none; in thy calm solitude, / A flower that scarce breathes in the desert rude / To Zephyr's passing wing?
2.
Not the swart Pariah in some Indian grove, / Lone, lean, and hunted by his brother's hate, / Hath drunk so deep the cup of bitter fate / As that poor wretch who cannot, cannot love: / He bears a load which nothing can remove, / A killing, withering weight.
Genres
- Romantic Poetry — An opening address compares isolation among a crowd to a desert flower, before describing the crushing sorrow of someone unable to love.
- Lyric Poetry — Three rhymed stanzas move from a question addressed to an isolated person to a third-person account of hollow smiles, sorrow and conflicted longing for death.
Tags
solitude · isolation · inability to love · despair · death wish · social alienation · lyric · romanticism
What this Textopian page supports
The Solitary is listed on Textopian as a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley, dated Date unknown.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Percy Bysshe Shelley
- Date: Date unknown
- Language: English
- Genres: Romantic Poetry, Lyric Poetry
- Length: 212 words
- Structure: 1 section, 6 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Standard (8th-9th Grade)
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