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!”
The Golden Years