A LIFETIMES STORY

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1747, 30 August 1905, Page 2

A LIFETIMES STORY

How canst thou gaze into the distant years And say “When I was young?” For time around thine early hopes and' fears So thick a veil hath flung; How canst thou brood upon the memory Of days when life was bountiful to thee? Yet as I look upon that paUid brow The shadows roll away; I see thee—not as thou art standing.; now, A figure bowed and grey— I see thee cradled on thy mother’s breast, And rocked: with mother’s tenderness to rest. I see thee later in thy life’s strange dream A fairest village child, ..-,r Thy tresses falling in a sunlit stream - O’er eyes serenely mild, That now are hollow sunken, dim and deep, Waiting to close themselves in life’s last sleep. A few short seasons, and the child has grown A winsome, laughing maid, Her clustered hair, obtrusive, backward thrown * In careless, tangled braid; But still returning o’er the rosy face To woo the maiden’s fretful, sportive . grace* I see thee wending o’er the daisied lea, By willow-dimpled streams, Blending the tones of summer melody' With love’s beguiling dreams; While one, above all others true and dear, Steps at thy side and: whispers in thine ear. I hear the bells that clangour from the tower One merry summer mom, While song of bird and fragrances of flower Upon the breeze are borne; Then, in the lowly church, all hushed and still, I hear the faintly utter’d words, “I wiU.” . I see thee act a wife and: mother’s part, While babes around thee cling, That link themselves like sunbeams in*, thy heart, , Or flowers in tender sparing. , I see the blow that, love in vain would brave. The bitter breaking heart, the grassgrown grave. I see thee sitting, old), and worn with years, Young hope® and gladness past, One only child to wipe away the tears That oft will gather fast, And he, thy guardian in an earlier day, Lying without thee in the churchyard way. I see thee sitting by the lonely fire Thy head upon thy breast; The hand so busy once hath learned to tire, The heart to crave for rest. > Yet when the Father gives thee rest in truth, Then shall He also give thee endless youth. —-Arthur L.. Salmon, in “The Queen.”