Emily Dickinson (1830-86) wrote powerfully about loneliness and solitude, and perhaps nowhere more movingly than ‘The Loneliness One dare not sound’, a poem about a loneliness so profound that we can’t even bring ourselves to confront it for fear of being overwhelmed. This loneliness is ‘The Horror not to be surveyed — / But skirted in the Dark — / With Consciousness suspended — / And Being under Lock’.
The Loneliness One dare not sound—
And would as soon surmise
As in its Grave go plumbing
To ascertain the size—