Ten Golden Years

The golden years as their wings flit by

         Drop out of the sky.

Some gift of love for our bonny Nessl

We see them stoop through the tingling air,

         And shake her hair

Into wrinkles of gold with their swet caress.

 

And one distills from his liquid sky

         The blue of her eye

Intensed with a dash of evening grey:

Of pearl-clouds, warmed with a sundown streak,

         One moulds her cheek

Into rounded ripeness pure as day.

 

From another all his jubilant June’s

         Diurnal tunes

To her lightest word for melody serve;

And one to the free and graceful swing

         Of wave and wing

Sets every flexure of limb and nerve.

 

Some give their light for the inner grace

         Of her sunny face

That in very silence seems a tune

And they all, the essential sweets impart

         To her little heart,

Of every lily and rose of June.

 

You golden Years! Out of all the fair

         And rich and rare

In their royal store they have covered our girl!

And fading away like a waning moon

         This song they croon

Just heard as they enter the Gates of Pearl.

 

“The swift Years come, and the swift Years go

         And to all below

What dole we deal we will take again;

But sealed in the gift is a better gift

         That in Wisdom’s thrift

Shall bless forever the souls of men.

 

“Be it foul or Fair, if ye take but this

         Which visibility is

No Good has Better, no Ill has cure;

But if Life resolve the outward dole

         To its inner soul

Ye find the beauty it holds, secure.

 

“For a day we give, in a day resume

         The rounding and bloom

Of rose and lily and blooming cheek

But the secret worth of everything

         We fashion or bring

Strikes down to the heart of the pure and weak.

 

“A Pet of the swift Years, bonny Bess,

         With a sweet caress

We shake into ripples your golden hair;

And better than dance and bloom and blue

 

We leave for you

A Beauty that heart and soul may share.

 

“Let every Day as it stoops to light

         On the shore of Night,

Drop into your bosom some virtue’s pearl,

And fill your sweet inches with good that grows—

         Like scent in the rose—

With the opening bloom of our bonny Girl!”