An Empty Nest by James Whitcomb Riley — Read

I find an old deserted nest, / Half-hidden in the underbrush: / A withered leaf, in phantom jest, / Has nestled in it like a thrush / With weary, palpitating breast.

I muse as one in sad surprise / Who seeks his childhood's home once more, / And finds it in a strange disguise / Of vacant rooms and naked floor, / With sudden tear-drops in his eyes.

An empty nest! It used to bear / A happy burden, when the breeze / Of summer rocked it, and a pair / Of merry tattlers told the trees / What treasures they had hidden there.

But Fancy, flitting through the gleams / Of youth's sunshiny atmosphere, / Has fallen in the past, and seems, / Like this poor leaflet nestled here, -- / A phantom guest of empty dreams.