make barren

Each year, thousands of sandhill cranes make Barren River Lake a stop as they gather in huge numbers to migrate.

Death and distance make barren our lives.

Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses or wives; And marriage and death and division Make barren our lives.

Then, as "the hand that has written it lays it aside," there is, perhaps, a pang at the reflection of how the paths now diverge of those who once walked together as— "Time turns the old days to derision, Our loves into corpses—or wives; And marriage, and death, and division, Make barren our lives."

"It would make barren a whole meadow."