Time passed. My eldest girl was married,
And I am now a grandsire gray!
One pet of four years old I've carried
Among the wild-flowered 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 impassioned blindness
Has passed 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 a hundred years ago.
HALF AN HOUR BEFORE SUPPER.
BY BRET HARTE.
"So she's here, your unknown Dulcinea—the lady you met on the train, And you really believe she would know you if you were to meet her again?"
"Of course," he replied, "she would know me; there was never
womankind yet
Forgot the effect she inspired. She excuses, but does not forget."
"Then you told her your love?" asked the elder; while the younger looked up with a smile: "I sat by her side half an hour—what else was I doing the while?
"What, sit by the side of a woman as fair as the sun in the sky, And look somewhere else lest the dazzle flash back from your own to her eye?
"No, I hold that the speech of the tongue be as frank and as bold as
the look,
And I held up myself to herself—that was more than she got from her
book."
"Young blood!" laughed the elder; "no doubt you are voicing the mode
of to-day:
But then we old fogies at least gave the lady some chance for delay.