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.
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