Alone

by Walter De La Mare — a poem card from Justes Mots

An intensely melancholic poem about grief and abandonment, using winter imagery and the absence of the speaker's beloved to convey profound isolation. De La Mare structures the poem with repeated refrains emphasizing the speaker's aloneness and employs the season as both setting and metaphor for emotional desolation. It is deeply appropriate for sympathy occasions and expressions of acute loss.

The abode of the nightingale is bare,
Flowered frost congeals in the gelid air,
The fox howls from his frozen lair:
Alas, my loved one is gone,
I am alone:
It is winter.

Once the pink cast a winy smell,…

Themes: sympathy · grief · reflection · long-distance