WE trod the bleak ridge, to and fro,
Grave forty, gay fourteen;
The yellow larks in Heaven's blue glow
⁠Like twinkling stars were seen,
And pink-flower'd larches, fring'd below,
⁠Were fabulously green.
 
And, as I watched my restless son
⁠Leap over gorse and briar,
And felt his golden nature run
⁠With April sap and fire,
Methought another madpate spun
⁠Beside another sire.
 
Sudden, the thirty years wing by,
⁠Shot, like a curtain's rings;
My father treads the ridge, and I
⁠The boy that leaps and flings;
While eyes that in the churchyard lie,
⁠Seem smiling tenderest things.