The Barren Moors
On your bare rocks, O barren moors,
On your bare rocks I love to lie!—
They stand like crags upon the shores,
Or clouds upon a placid sky.
Across those spaces desolate
The fox pursues his lonely way,
Those solitudes can fairly sate
The passage of my loneliest day.
Like desert islands far at sea
Where not a ship can ever land,
Those dim uncertainties to me
For something veritable stand.
A serious place distinct from all
Which busy Life delights to feel,—
I stand in this deserted hall,
And thus the wounds of time conceal.
No friend’s cold eye, or sad delay,
Shall vex me now where not a sound
Falls on the ear, and every day
Is soft as silence most profound.
No more upon these distant worlds
The agitating world can come,
A single Pensive thought upholds
The arches of this dreamy home.
Within the sky above, one thought
Replies to you, O barren moors!
Between, I stand, a creature taught
To stand between two silent floors.
About this poem
“The Barren Moors” is by William Ellery Channing II (1818–1901), the Concord poet who was a close friend and walking companion of Henry David Thoreau.
The speaker finds comfort in a bleak, empty landscape. The bare rocks are like desert islands that no ship can reach, a place where “the agitating world” cannot follow. Solitude here is not loss but relief: no friend’s cold eye, no sound, every day “soft as silence most profound.” The poem belongs to the Transcendentalist tradition of seeking in wild nature a refuge from the busy life of society.