| Time’s Reversals |
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To his devoted heart*
Who, young, had loved his ageing mate for life,
In late lone years Time gave the elder’s part,
Time gave the bridegroom’s boast, Time gave a younger wife.
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A wilder prank and plot
Time soon will promise, threaten, offering me
Impossible things that Nature suffers not—
A daughter’s riper mind, a child’s seniority.
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Oh, by my filial tears
Mourned all too young, Father! On this my head
Time yet will force at last the longer years,
Claiming some strange respect for me from you, the dead.
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Nay, nay! Too new to know
Time’s conjuring is, too great to understand.
Memory has not died; it leaves me so—
Leaning a fading brow on your unfaded hand.
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* Dr. Johnson outlived by thirty years his wife,
who was twenty years his senior.
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