AS in their flight the birds of song <br />Halt here and there in sweet and sunny dales, <br />But halt not overlong; <br />The time one rural song to sing <br />They pause; then following bounteous gales <br />Steer forward on the wing: <br />Sun-servers they, from first to last, <br />Upon the sun they wait <br />To ride the sailing blast. <br /> <br />So he awhile in our contested state, <br />Awhile abode, not longer, for his Sun - <br />Mother we say, no tenderer name we know - <br />With whose diviner glow <br />His early days had shone, <br />Now to withdraw her radiance had begun. <br />Or lest a wrong I say, not she withdrew, <br />But the loud stream of men day after day <br />And great dust columns of the common way <br />Between them grew and grew: <br />And he and she for evermore might yearn, <br />But to the spring the rivulets not return <br />Nor to the bosom comes the child again. <br /> <br />And he (O may we fancy so!), <br />He, feeling time forever flow <br />And flowing bear him forth and far away <br />From that dear ingle where his life began <br />And all his treasure lay - <br />He, waxing into man, <br />And ever farther, ever closer wound <br />In this obstreperous world's ignoble round, <br />From that poor prospect turned his face away.<br /><br />Robert Louis Stevenson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/as-in-their-flight-the-birds-of-song/
