Explore "To the Quiet Observer. Erasmus Wilson, after his Long Silence" by James Whitcomb Riley on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Dear old friend of us all in need / Who know the worth of a friend indeed, / How rejoiced are we all to learn / Of your glad return.
We who have missed your voice so long -- / Even as March might miss the song / Of the sugar-bird in the maples when / They're tapped again.
Even as the memory of these / _Blended_ sweets, -- the sap of the trees / And the song of the birds, and the old camp too, / We think of you.
Hail to you, then, with welcomes deep / As grateful hearts may laugh or weep! -- / You give us not only the bird that sings, / But all good things.