Strayed - A poem by Albert Bigelow Paine

Strayed.

I WONDER, sometimes, as I sit alone,
When the cares of the busy day are over,
And the books are closed, and the clerks are gone,
What has become of that careless rover

That I knew so well some years ago
As a devil-may-care, wild sort of a fellow,
With a face like mine, only younger you know,
Not quite so wrinkled, nor half so yellow.

He vanished one glorious day in June,
The happiest day in all my life;
We never missed him till he was gone,
And a woman stood by that I called "'my wife."

And I soon forgot I had ever known
Such a devil-may-care, wild sort of a rover,
Save now and then as I sit alone
When the cares of the busy day are over.

Then, sometimes, I wonder where he can be,
For we never have seen him about since then,
But he looked altogether so much like me
That I'm glad he never came back again.

^__Albert Bigelow Paine.