I
TO WILLIE AND HENRIETTA
If two may read aright
These rhymes of old delight
And house and garden play,
You two, 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 none can bind,
While flowing fast away, leaves love behind.