DESERTED HOMES. 



With footsteps screaming o'er the snow, 



I walk in the piercing air, 

 Wtiere winds are sighing soft and low 



Through the branches brown and bare. 



The homes are all deserted now 



Of the friends I held so dear, 

 The nest clings to the naked bough, 



The birds are no longer here. 

 Slow swaj'S the bough of greenbereft, 



Where the thrush at evening sung, 

 And but a few frail twigs are left 



Where the wild dove reared her young- 

 There in the tree-top bleak and high 



Sways the grackles empty nest 

 Where her young, e'er they learned to fly 



Xestled 'neath her sable breast. 

 The kingbird's homefor days has lain, 



A sad ruin in the snow, 

 And nests for which I searched in vain, 



Xow in bushes plainly show. 

 The yellow warbler's small abode 



Hangs dismantled in the cold. 

 Wehere silvernotes in beauty flowed 



From an instrument of gold. 



As in a volume worn and old, 



One finds blossoms old and dry, 

 But on whose leaves are stories told 



Of happier days gone by. 

 So in each empty nest I find, 



A memory of some sweet lay 

 That wakes an echo in my mind, 



Though the singer is far away. 



Hattie Washburn, 



