The Ring of Life

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.