AmyLowell:FromOneWhoStays

How empty seems the town now you are gone!

A wilderness of sad streets, where gaunt walls

Hide nothing to desire; sunshine falls

Eery, distorted, as it long had shone

On white, dead faces tombed in halls of stone.

The whir of motors, stricken through with calls

Of playing boys, floats up at intervals;

But all these noises blur to one long moan.

What quest is worth pursuing? And how strange

That other men still go accustomed ways!

I hate their interest in the things they do.

A spectre-horde repeating without change

An old routine. Alone I know the days

Are still-born, and the world stopped, lacking

you.