THE children! ah, the children!
Your innocent, joyous ones;
Your daughters, with souls of sunshine;
Your buoyant and laughing sons.
Look long in their happy faces,
Drink love from their sparkling eyes,
For the wonderful charm of childhood,
How soon it withers and dies!
A few fast-vanishing summers,
A season or twain of frost,
And you suddenly ask, bewildered
"What is it my heart hath lost?"
Perhaps you see by the hearth-stone
Some Juno, stately and proud,
Or a Hebe whose softly ambushed eyes
Flash out from the golden cloud
Of lavish and beautiful tresses
That wantonly floating, stray
O'er the white of a throat and bosom
More fair than blossoms in May.
And perhaps you mark their brothers--
Young heroes who spurn the sod
With the fervor of antique knighthood,
And the air of a Grecian god!
But where, ah, where are the children,
Your household fairies of yore?
Alack! they are dead, and their grace has fled
For ever and ever more!
