The Upmarket Version

You say that yesterday's limerick was a tad, well, impertinent?  Well sure, but it is the job of limericks to be impertinent--not least to help us bear the awfulness of the underlying message.  But for a more dignified version, we pass the mike to Edna St. Vincent Milllay:

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

So Sonnet XLIII.   Repeating:

Stands the lonely tree/Nor knows what birds have vanished..."  

An echo of

"Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang..."

--one of he many best lines Shakespeare ever wrote.