In my bedroom the next morning there was a sad and heavy heart.

The owner woke up, stared at the ceiling, then at the sun-baked bricks beyond his window.

He saw not the glory of the sun and the heavens.
To his eyes there was nothing poetic in the flash of the distant church-spires against the billowy cloudbanks.

The gray doves, circling about the chimneys, did not inspire him, nor the twittering of the sparrows on the window ledge.

There was nothing at all in the world but a long stretch of barren, lonely years.