Deserted Homes

Deserted Homes 

by Hattie Washborn

With footsteps screaming o'er the snow,

I walk in the piercing air,

Where winds are sighing soft and low

Through the branches brown and bare.

The homes are all deserted now

Of the friends I held so dear,

The nest clings to the naked bough,

The birds are no longer here.

Slow sways the bough of green bereft,

Where the thrush at evening sung,

And but a few frail twigs are left

Where the wild dove reared her young.

There in the tree-top bleak and high

Sways the grackles empty nest

Where her young, e'er thy learned to fly

Nestled 'neath her sable breast.

The kingbird's home for days has lain,

A sad ruin in the snow,

And nests for which I searched in vain,

Now in bushes plainly show.

The yellow warbler's small abode

Hangs dismantled in the cold.

Where silver notes in beauty flowed

From an instrument of gold.

As in a volume worn and old,

One finds blossoms old and dry,

But on whose leaves are stories told

Of happier days gone by.

So in each empty nest I find,

A memory of some sweet lay

That wakes an echo in my mind

Though the singer is far away.