Classic Poem

It seems but yesterday, and yet
I was then but two years from school,
This picture I can not forget,
Over all life's seething pool.
The sweet light voice, a living lute,
The sweet slim figure struck me mute;
Matilda was the lovely name,
Within a neat red-pencilled frame
I wrote it in my first verse book,
Snugly kept in secret nook!

She came to us beneath the wing
Of her mamma, whose bonnet wide
Was an epitome of spring, —
So long since, I must even confide,
The great scooped bonnet was just then
Adored by fashion and by men:
Well I remember wondering
How this frank angel ever came
From such a broad-winged pompous dame!

And after forty years depart,
Child and mamma drop on us here;
Can the slim figure and light heart
Beneath the same broad wing appear
Again in this far distant year?
Ah no! the ladies seem the same,
But the bonnet is quite different;
Matilda is the pompous dame,
And this her daughter Millicent!

Good heavens! it is indeed just so.
Time reproduces all his toys;
Here is the pair of long ago
Touching the hearts of other boys
And am Ithen to moralise,
With satire in my rhymes and eyes?
The sonsy matron! suppose we
Ask her now what she thinks of me ?