Ilean my aching forehead on my palms,
And think how it will be another year,
When May, with passionate showers and sunny calms,
Will walk this way, and I shall not be here.

The city will not miss me: I have been
Only a step-child of its dust and noise;
Longing and homesick, in its strife and din,
For the green country and its quiet joys.

Threading its wilderness of crowded streets,
How have I longed for rural summer-tides,—
For tangled wood-paths, full of dewy sweets,
And cool green ways by murmuring river-sides!

These alien souls will never miss the face,
Tear-stained sometimes, and sometimes summer-fair,
Which came and went among them for a space,
And then was gone,—and no one wondered where.

But thou, who wanderest distant lands across,
How will thy heart, O tender and most dear,
Ache with a sudden sense of bitter loss
When thou returnest and I am not here!