| |
| 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. | |
| Thro’ groves and meads, o’er grass and heather, | 5 |
| 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; | 10 |
| Still with no care our days were laden, | |
| They glided joyously along; | |
| And did I love you very dearly— | |
| How dearly words want power to show; | |
| I thought your heart was touched as nearly; | 15 |
| 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 center of its glittering sphere. | 20 |
| 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: | 25 |
| 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: | 30 |
| 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; | 35 |
| But I too had my festal days. | |
| No merrier eyes have ever glisten’d | |
| Around the hearth-stone’s wintry glow, | |
| Then when my youngest child was christen’d:— | |
| But that was twenty years ago. | 40 |
| |
| Time past. My eldest girl was married, | |
| And now I am a grandsire grey; | |
| One pet of four years old I’ve carried | |
| Among the wild-flower’d meads to play. | |
| In our old fields of childish pleasure, | 45 |
| Where now, as then, the cowslips blow, | |
| She fills her basket’s ample measure,— | |
| But that is not ten years ago. | |
| |
| But tho’ first love’s impassion’d blindness | |
| Has pass’d away in colder light, | 50 |
| 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 | 55 |
| Will be an hundred years ago. | |
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