Those belonged to the youth who must tarry at home,
When no home but an attic he’d got—he’d got!
“How I longed, in that lonest of garrets,
Where the tiles baked my brains all July,
For ground to grow two pecks of carrots,
Two pigs of my own in a sty,
A rosebush, a little thatched cottage,
Two spoons, love, a basin of pottage!
Now in freestone I sit, and my dotage,
With a woman’s chair empty close by—close by!