Scan those deep mirrors well
After long years:
Lo! what aforetime fell
In rain of tears,
In radiant glamour-mist now reappears.
See old wild gladness
Tamed now and coy;
Grief that was madness
Turned into joy.
Fate cannot harry them now, nor annoy.
Down from yon throbbing blue,
Passionless, fair,
Still faces look on you,
Sunlit their hair,
With a slow smile at your pleasure and care.
Life and death murmurings
From their lips go
In vaster music-rings;
Outward they flow,
Tenderer, wilder, than songs that we know.
VI.
My love's unchanged—though time, alas!
Turns silver-gilt the golden mass
Of flowing hair, and pales, I wis,
The rose that deepened with that kiss—
The first—before our marriage was.
And though the fields of corn and grass,
So radiant then, as summers pass
Lose something of their look of bliss,
My love's unchanged.
Our tiny girl's a sturdy lass;
Our boy's shrill pipe descends to bass;
New friends appear, the old we miss;
My Love grows old ... in spite of this
My love's unchanged.