When You Go Away

by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

When you go away, my friend,
When we say our last good-bye,
Then the summer time will end,
And the winter will be nigh.
Though the green grass decks the heather,
And the birds sing all the day,
There will be no summer weather,
After you have gone away.

When I look into your eyes,
I shall thrill with sharpest pain;
Thinking that beneath the skies,
I may never look again.
You will feel a moment's sorrow
I shall feel a lasting grief;
You forgetting on the morrow --
I, to mourn with no relief.

When we say the last, sad words,
And you are no longer near,
All the winds, and all the birds,
Can not keep the summer here.
Life will lose its full completeness,
Lose it, not for you, but me;
All the beauty and the sweetness
Earth can hold, I shall not see.

1870.