Hazel Hall’s speaker is alone and begins to ask what loneliness actually feels like. She describes it as a silence like the tone of a deep bell, as moments that seem frozen, and as a hush hovering over a busy street. She feels removed, compared to a tree standing far off on a hill, its roots gripping below and its branches reaching out like hands. At the same time, she senses life pressing inside her, the way sap moves into even the thinnest branch. By the end, she accepts that if this strange mix of stillness, distance, and inward pressure is loneliness, then she is feeling it right now. The mood is quiet and suspended, not exactly desperate, but intensely aware of being cut off.
Loneliness — Summary
Sometimes when I am long alone I wonder what is loneliness — This silence like a deep bell's tone, These moments, motionless?
This hush above the nervous street? Removed as is the tree that stands, Hill-high, with burrowing root-feet And boughs like reaching hands.
As in my blood I feel life press. Like sap into the frailest bough, I think if such is loneliness Then I am lonely now.