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.