ESTRANGED

No one was with me there —

Happy I was — alone;

Yet from the sunshine suddenly

A joy was gone.

A bird in an empty house

Sad echoes makes to ring,

Flitting from room to room

On restless wing:

Till from its shades he flies,

And leaves forlorn and dim

The narrow solitudes

So strange to him.

So, when with fickle heart

I joyed in the passing day,

A presence my mood estranged

Went grieved away.