If two may read aright
     These rhymes of old delight
     And house and garden play,
You two, my cousins, and you only, may.

     You in a garden green
     With me were king and queen,
     Were hunter, soldier, tar,
And all the thousand things that children are.

     Now in the elders' seat
     We rest with quiet feet,
     And from the window-bay
We watch the children, our successors, play.

     "Time was," the golden head
     Irrevocably said;
     But time which one can bind,
While flowing fast away, leaves love behind.