Back home again, I strolled the fields
Where I once roamed, in childhood days,
When bush and flowers, even weeds
Spelled beauty, in the sun's first rays.

But now the pampas grass is thin;
The wild rose has grown subtly old;
Bush-clover nods unsteady head
As over earth steals stealthy cold.

Long gone the gentian, goldenrod,
The blue and gold of perfumed fields.
My still young heart my now old age
From disappointment blithely shields.