I
To Willie and Henrietta
If two may read aright
These rhymes
of old delight
And house and
garden play,
You too, my cousins, and you only, may.
You in a
garden green
With me were
king and queen,
Were hunter,
soldier, tar,
And all the thousand things that children are.
Now in the
elders' seat
We rest with
quiet feet,
And from the
window-bay
We watch the children, our successors, play.
"Time
was," the golden head
Irrevocably
said;
But time which
one can bind,
While flowing fast away, leaves love behind.
