A blue-eyed child that sits amid the noon,
O'erhung with a laburnum's drooping sprays,
Singing her little song, while softly round
Along the grass the chequered sunshine plays.
All beauty that is throned in womanhood,
Facing a summer garden's fountained walks,
That stoops to smooth a glossy spaniel down,
To hide her flushing cheeks from one who talks.
A happy mother with her fair-faced girls,
In whose sweet spring her youth again she sees,
With shout, and dance, and laugh, and bound, and song,
Stripping an autumns orchard laden trees.
An aged woman in a wintry room —
Frost on the pane, without the whirling snow —
Reading old letters of her far-off youth,
Of sorrows past, and joys of long ago.