If I could bid thee, pleasant shade, farewell <br />Without a sigh, amidst whose circling bowers <br />My stripling prime was passed, and happiest hours, <br />Dead were I to the sympathies that swell <br />The human breast! These woods, that whispering wave, <br />My father reared and nursed, now to the grave <br />Gone down; he loved their peaceful shades, and said, <br />Perhaps, as here he mused: Live, laurels green; <br />Ye pines that shade the solitary scene, <br />Live blooming and rejoice! When I am dead <br />My son shall guard you, and amid your bowers, <br />Like me, find shelter from life's beating showers. <br />These thoughts, my father, every spot endear; <br />And whilst I think, with self-accusing pain, <br />A stranger shall possess the loved domain, <br />In each low wind I seem thy voice to hear. <br />But these are shadows of the shaping brain <br />That now my heart, alas! can ill sustain: <br />We must forget--the world is wide--the abode <br />Of peace may still be found, nor hard the road. <br />It boots not, so, to every chance resigned, <br />Where'er the spot, we bear the unaltered mind. <br />Yet, oh! poor cottage, and thou sylvan shade, <br />Remember, ere I left your coverts green, <br />Where in my youth I mused, in childhood played, <br />I gazed, I paused, I dropped a tear unseen, <br />That bitter from the font of memory fell, <br />Thinking on him who reared you; now, farewell!<br /><br />William Lisle Bowles<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-leaving-a-place-of-residence/
