Poems (Allen)/Then

by Elizabeth Chase Allen

THEN.

LEAN 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!