Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
Thomas Love Peacock. 17851866593. 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, | 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 I did love you very dearly, | |
How dearly words want power to show; | |
I thought your heart was touch’d 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 centre of its glimmering 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, | |
Than when my youngest child was christen’d; | |
But that was twenty years ago. | 40 |
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, | 45 |
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, | 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. |