THE DEATH OF REGRET

I opened my shutter at sunrise,

And looked at the hill hard by,

And I heartily grieved for the comrade

Who wandered up there to die.

I let in the morn on the morrow,

And failed not to think of him then,

As he trod up that rise in the twilight,

And never came down again.

I undid the shutter a week thence,

But not until after I'd turned

Did I call back his last departure

By the upland there discerned.

Uncovering the casement long later,

I bent to my toil till the gray,

When I said to myself, “Ah — what ails me,

To forget him all the day!”

As daily I flung back the shutter

In the same blank bald routine,

He scarcely once rose to remembrance

Through a month of my facing the scene.

And ah, seldom now do I ponder

At the window as heretofore

On the long valued one who died yonder,

And wastes by the sycamore.