The last reader

I sometimes sit beneath a tree and read my own sweet songs;

Though naught they may to others be,

Each humble line prolongs a tone that might have passed away,

But for that scarce remembered lay.

They lie upon my pathway bleak,

Those flowers that once ran wild,

As on a father's careworn cheek

The ringlets of his child;

The golden mingling with the gray,

and stealing half its snows away.