sixty years since first beneath this tree
I stood a boy of ten,
And here what time has left, or made of me,
I stand again.
Let me retrace the path which I have made,
A path too quickly found;
For it is marked by many a cypress shade,
And rising mound.
I was the youngest of a group whose mirth
Made us a merry home;
I sit alone beside my silent hearth–
Where are they gone ?
Father and mother long have fallen asleep–
The grass grows on each breast,
Brothers and sister I have had to weep;
They are at rest.
A gentle wife upon my happy heart
Rested her golden head–
I watched her fade and silently depart,
And kissed her dead.
Three little children clung around my knee,
Bright-haired and earnest-eyed,
But none of them doth now remain to me,
They too have died.
The friends of youth no more with tales of old
The pleasant past recall,
In dreamless sleep they lie serenely cold–
I've outlived all.
Yet, as I sit while shadows to and fro
Around me softly steal,
I live again the happy long ago,
And happy feel.
Again, with playmates, on the velvet lawn
I triumph strive to gain
And climb the mountain at the break of dawn,
With throbbing vein.
I swim the lakes and roam the leafy wood;
Soft was the setting sun,
Ah! nowhere did I then find solitude;
My heart was young.
And, golden time! again I woo my bride,
My withered pulses stir,
Among the fairest in a world so wide
Who was like her?
How well I see her, that soft summer even
When in the bending skies
The stars stole out, less bright to me in heaven
Than her dear eyes.
I spoke my love, and her quick-waving blush
Her own to me confessed;
Well, well, perchance 'tis better I should hush,
Such thoughts to rest.
After the dust and heat of life, long way,
Now when the night is near,
The stars shine out, that had been hid by day,
Divinely clear.
By them I see life's silver cord held fast,
Clasped by a wounded Hand:
The deep significance of grief, at last
I understand.