I saunter all about the pleasant place <br />You made thrice pleasant, O my friends, to me; <br />But you are gone where laughs in radiant grace <br />That thousand-memoried unimpulsive sea. <br />To storied precincts of the southern foam, <br />Dear birds of passage, ye have taken wing, <br />And ah! for me, when April wafts you home, <br />The spring will more than ever be the spring <br />Still lovely, as of old, this haunted ground; <br />Tenderly, still, the autumn sunshine falls; <br />And gorgeously the woodlands tower around, <br />Freak'd with wild light at golden intervals: <br />Yet, for the ache your absence leaves, O friends, <br />Earth's lifeless pageantries are poor amends.<br /><br />William Watson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-empty-nest-3/
