The Return

He sought the old scenes with eager feet —
The scenes he had known as a boy;
“Oh, for a draught of those fountains sweet,
And a taste of that vanished joy!”

He roamed the fields, he wooed the streams,
His schoolboy paths essayed to trace;
The orchard ways recalled his dreams,
The hills were like his mother’s face.

O sad, sad hills! O cold, cold hearth!
In sorrow he learned this truth —
One may return to the place of his birth,
He cannot go back to his youth.