From One Who Stays

          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.