Love and Age
I PLAY’D with you ’mid cowslips blowing,
When I was six and you were four;
When garlands weaving, flower-balls throwing,
Were pleasures soon to please no more.
Through groves and meads, o’er grass and heather,
With little playmates, to and fro,
We wander’d hand in hand together;
But that was sixty years ago.
You grew a lovely roseate maiden,
And still our early love was strong;
Still with no care our days were laden,
They glided joyously along;
And I did love you very dearly,
How dearly words want power to show;
I thought your heart was touch’d as nearly;
But that was fifty years ago.
Then other lovers came around you,
Your beauty grew from year to year,
And many a splendid circle found you
The centre of its glittering sphere.
I saw you then, first vows forsaking,
On rank and wealth your hand bestow;
O, then I thought my heart was breaking!—
But that was forty years ago.
And I lived on, to wed another:
No cause she gave me to repine;
And when I heard you were a mother,
I did not wish the children mine.
My own young flock, in fair progression,
Made up a pleasant Christmas row:
My joy in them was past expression;
But that was thirty years ago.
You grew a matron plump and comely,
You dwelt in fashion’s brightest blaze;
My earthly lot was far more homely;
But I too had my festal days.
No merrier eyes have ever glisten’d
Around the hearth-stone’s wintry glow,
Than when my youngest child was christen’d;
But that was twenty years ago.
Time pass’d. My eldest girl was married,
And I am now a grandsire gray;
One pet of four years old I’ve carried
Among the wild-flower’d meads to play.
In our old fields of childish pleasure,
Where now, as then, the cowslips blow,
She fills her basket’s ample measure;
And that is not ten years ago.
But though first love’s impassion’d blindness
Has pass’d away in colder light,
I still have thought of you with kindness,
And shall do, till our last good-night.
The ever-rolling silent hours
Will bring a time we shall not know,
When our young days of gathering flowers
Will be an hundred years ago.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Thomas-Love-Peacock
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/thomas-love-peacock
http://www.thomaslovepeacock.net/
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/493
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2075/2075-h/2075-h.htm
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/9909/pg9909-images.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1elXrrkfhs
https://englishverse.com/poems/love_and_age
https://poetryarchive.org/poet/thomas-love-peacock/
https://mypoeticside.com/poets/thomas-love-peacock-poems
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n03/thomas-keymer/bring-some-madeira
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/18/100-best-novels-nightmare-abbey-thomas-love-peacock
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cF5eblEgVoU
https://archives.nypl.org/cps/22385
https://www.kyrackramer.com/2017/10/18/the-laughing-philosopher-thomas-love-peacock/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6e4c5_E8qF8
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1014736917428511&set=a.436721428563399
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Love_Peacock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Love_Peacock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Misfortunes_of_Elphin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightmare_Abbey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crotchet_Castle