O Solitude, My Sweetest Choice

O solitude, my sweetest choice!
O solitude, o solitude
My sweetest choice!

Places devoted to the night
Remote from tumult and from noise
How ye my restless thoughts delight!
O solitude, o solitude
My sweetest choice!

O heav'ns! What content is mine
To see these trees
Which have appeared
From the nativity of time
And which all ages have revered
To look today as fresh and green
To look today as fresh and green
As when their beauties first were seen

Oh, how agreeable a sight
These hanging mountains do appear
Which th'unhappy would invite
To finish all their sorrows here
When their hard, their hard fate
Makes them endure such woes
Such woes as only death can cure

Oh, oh, how I solitude adore
Oh, oh, how I solitude adore
That element of noblest wit
Where I have learnt
Where I have learnt Apollo's lore
Without the pains
The pains to study it

For thy sake
I in love am grown
With what thy fancy
Thy fancy doth pursue
But when I think upon my own
I hate it, i hate it for that reason too
Because it needs must hinder me
From seeing, from seeing
And from serving thee

O solitude, oh how I solitude adore!