Eric Torgersen - The Piper

No, he never led them far away,
willing as they were to follow
and not to go back.
The mountain never opened
to take them in.

Just over the mountain
he left them.

Having heard such music,
they believed,
they could never again be the children
of that sad town.

Somewhere ahead must lie,
they believed,
the joyous land from which he came.

But they did not believe
that they might find it without him.

Some, in the end, went forward
and some went back.

You may know them and their kind
by a small empty place
in the corner of the eye
in every town where the young
pine for a distant land,
in every land
where they mourn the remembered town

Eric Torgersen

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-piper-6/