A Lament.

The wold is drear, and the sedge is sere,

And gray is the autumn sky,

And sorrows roll through my riven soul

As lonely I sit and sigh

“Good-by”

To the goose-birds as they fly.

With his weird wishbone to the temperate zone

Came the goose-bird in the spring;

And he built his nest in the glorious west,

And sat on a snag to sing—

Sweet thing!—

Or flap his beautiful wing.

But the boom of the blast has come at last

To the goose-bird on the lea;

And the succulent thing, with shivering wing,

Flies down to a southern sea—

Ah me,

That such separation should be!

But it’s always so in this world of woe:

The things that gladden our eye

Are the surest to go to the bugs; and so

We can only wearily sigh

“Good-by”

To the goose-birds as they fly.

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