Poetry Archives

I play’d with you ’mid cowslips blowing,
  When I was six and you were four;
When garlands weaving, flower-balls throwing,
  Were pleasures soon to please no more.
Through groves and meads, o’er grass and heather,
  With little playmates, to and fro,
We wander’d hand in hand together;
  But that was sixty years ago.

You grew a lovely roseate maiden,
  And still our early love was strong;
Still with no care our days were laden,
  They glided joyously along;
And I did love you very dearly,
  How dearly words want power to show;
I thought your heart was touch’d as nearly;
  But that was fifty years ago.

Then other lovers came around you,
  Your beauty grew from year to year,
And many a splendid circle found you
  The centre of its glimmering sphere.
I saw you then, first vows forsaking,
  On rank and wealth your hand bestow;
O, then I thought my heart was breaking!—
  But that was forty years ago.

And I lived on, to wed another:
  No cause she gave me to repine;
And when I heard you were a mother,
  I did not wish the children mine.
My own young flock, in fair progression,
  Made up a pleasant Christmas row:
My joy in them was past expression;
  But that was thirty years ago.

You grew a matron plump and comely,
  You dwelt in fashion’s brightest blaze;
My earthly lot was far more homely;
  But I too had my festal days.
No merrier eyes have ever glisten’d
  Around the hearth-stone’s wintry glow,
Than when my youngest child was christen’d;
  But that was twenty years ago.

Time pass’d. My eldest girl was married,
  And I am now a grandsire gray;
One pet of four years old I’ve carried
  Among the wild-flower’d meads to play.
In our old fields of childish pleasure,
  Where now, as then, the cowslips blow,
She fills her basket’s ample measure;
  And that is not ten years ago.

But though first love’s impassion’d blindness
  Has pass’d away in colder light,
I still have thought of you with kindness,
  And shall do, till our last good-night.
The ever-rolling silent hours
  Will bring a time we shall not know,
When our young days of gathering flowers
  Will be an hundred years ago.