Child, do you love the flower
Ashine with colour and dew
Lighting its transient hour?
So I love you.
The lambs in the mead are at play,
'Neath a hurdle the shepherd's asleep;
From height to height of the day
The sunbeams sweep.
Evening will come. And alone
The dreamer the dark will beguile;
All the world will be gone
For a dream's brief while.
Then I shall be old; and away:
And you, with sad joy in your eyes,
Will brood over children at play
With as loveful surmise.