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.