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Even the lovers of solitude keep searching for a mind like their own, as if loneliness still contains a stubborn hope for companionship.

Aloneness is chosen and yet not sufficient. Madmen on beach or mountain still look outward for a ghostly counterpart, which gives the walk a strange mix of isolation and longing. The leap toward stars and laughter beyond meditation makes that search feel both cosmic and unstable.

'THE LONG WALK': 'Madmen loving aloneness on the beach or upon the mountain' still 'look for the ghost or being of another likened mind', reaching toward 'a military way to the stars / In laughter further than meditation'.

The poem catches the contradiction at the heart of chosen solitude: the madmen 'loving aloneness' are the same ones still scanning for a 'likened mind'. Loving isolation and hunting for a double are not opposites here but the same act. The pivot to 'a military way to the stars' refuses the pastoral hermit and arms the longing instead, while 'laughter further than meditation' sets joy past contemplation as the real destination - a strange, unstable endpoint for a walk that began in seclusion.