My little friends, my lovers, we must part, And, like some
uncompanioned pine that stands, Last of the legions on the southern slopes, I too shall stand alone, and hungry winds Shall gnaw the lute-strings of my desolate heart.
Drawing on the experience of Poor Joanna, the urban narrator generalizes her isolation, commodifying the ascetic perspective for her urban audience: "In the life of each of us, I said to myself, there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the
uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong" (65).
"In the life of each of us," she thinks, "there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the
uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day."