Th Ring of Life
By Edmund Gosse
WE trod the bleak ridge, to and fro,
Grave forty, gay fourteen;
The yellow larks in Heaven's blue glow
Like twinkling stars were seen,
And pink-flower'd larches, fring'd below,
Were fabulously green.
And, as I watched my restless son
Leap over gorse and briar,
And felt his golden nature run
With April sap and fire,
Methought another madpate spun
Beside another sire.
Sudden, the thirty years wing by,
Shot, like a curtain's rings;
My father treads the ridge, and I
The boy that leaps and flings;
While eyes that in the churchyard lie,
Seem smiling tenderest things.