Not wholly in the busy world, nor quite
Beyond it, blooms the garden that I love,
News from the humming city comes to it
In sound of funeral or of marriage bells;
And sitting muffled in dark leaves you hear
The windy clanging of the minster clock;
Although between it and the garden lies
A league of grass.
Even "sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh" are often pleasing when mellowed by the space of air through which they pass.
'Tis distance lends enchantment to the sound.
Shelley, in one of his sweetest poems, speaking of a scene in the neighbourhood of Naples, beautifully says:--
Like many a voice of one delight,
The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,
The city's voice itself is soft, like solitude's.
No doubt the feeling that we are near the crowd but not in it, may deepen the sense of our own happy rural seclusion and doubly endear that pensive leisure in which we can "think down hours to moments," and in
This our life, exempt from public haunt,
Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
Shakespeare.
Besides, to speak truly, few men, however studious or philosophical, desire a total isolation from the world. It is pleasant to be able to take a sort of side glance at humanity, even when we are most in love with nature, and to feel that we can join our fellow creatures again when the social feeling returns upon us. Man was not made to live alone. Cowper, though he clearly loved retirement and a garden, did not desire to have the pleasure entirely to himself. "Grant me," he says, "a friend in my retreat."
To whom to whisper solitude is sweet.