LOVE AND AGE

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 glittering sphere.

I saw you then, first vows forsaking,

    On rank and wealth your hand bestow;

0, 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 grands ire 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.

-Thomas L. Peacock