The Wistful Days Poem by Robert Underwood Johnson

What is there wanting in the Spring?
The air is soft as yesteryear;
The happy-nested green is here,
And half the world is on the wing.
The morning beckons, and like balm
Are westward waters blue and calm.
Yet something’s wanting in the Spring.

What is it wanting in the Spring?
O April, lover to us all,
What is so poignant in thy thrall
When children’s merry voices ring?
What haunts us in the cooing dove
More subtle than the speech of Love,
What nameless lack or loss of Spring?

Let Youth go dally with the Spring,
Call her the dear, the fair, the young;
And all her graces ever sung
Let him, once more rehearsing, sing.
They know, who keep a broken tryst,
Till something from the Spring be missed
We have not truly known the Spring.