FIFTY AND FIFTEEN.
Reading edition
With gradual gleam the day was dawning, Some lingering stars were seen, When swung the garden-gate behind us,— He fifty, I fifteen.
The high-topped chaise and old gray pony Stood waiting in the lane: Idly my father swayed the whip-lash, Lightly he held the rein.
The stars went softly back to heaven, The night-fogs rolled away, And rims of gold and crowns of crimson Along the hill-tops lay.
That morn, the fields, they surely never So fair an aspect wore; And never from the purple clover Such perfume rose before.
O'er hills and low romantic valleys And flowery by-roads through, I sang my simplest songs, familiar, That he might sing them too.
Our souls lay open to all pleasure,— No shadow came between; Two children, busy with their leisure,— He fifty, I fifteen.
* * * * *
As on my couch in languor, lonely, I weave beguiling rhyme, Comes back with strangely sweet remembrance That far-removed time.
The slow-paced years have brought sad changes, That morn and this between; And now, on earth, my years are fifty, And his, in heaven, fifteen.