Thomas Love Peacock
Love and Age
I PLAYD 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, oer grass and heather,
With little playmates, to and fro,
We wanderd 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 touchd 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;
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 fashions brightest blaze;
My earthly lot was far more homely;
But I too had my festal days.
No merrier eyes have ever glistend
Around the hearth-stones wintry glow,
Than when my youngest child was christend;
But that was twenty years ago.
Time passd. My eldest girl was married,
And I am now a grandsire gray;
One pet of four years old Ive carried
Among the wild-flowerd meads to play.
In our old fields of childish pleasure,
Where now, as then, the cowslips blow,
She fills her baskets ample measure;
And that is not ten years ago.
But though first loves impassiond blindness
Has passd 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.
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