Your letter, on my eightieth birthday, wakes Memories, like violets, in this London gloom. You have never failed, for more than three-score years To send these annual greetings from the haunts Where you and I were boy and girl together. A day must come-it cannot now be far-- When I shall have no power to thank you for them, So let me tell you now that, all my life, They have come to me with healing in their wings Like birds from home, birds from the happy woods Above the Witham, where you walked with me When you and I were young. Do you remember Old Barley--how he tried to teach us drawing? He found some promise, I believe, in you, But quite despaired of me. I treasure all Those little sketches that you sent to me Each Christmas, carrying each some glimpse of home. There's one I love that shows the narrow lane Behind the schoolhouse, where I had that bout Of schoolboy fisticuffs. I have never known More pleasure, I believe, than when I beat That black-haired bully and won, for my reward, Those April smiles from you. I see you still Standing among the fox-gloves in the hedge; And just behind you, in the field, I know There was a patch of aromatic flowers,-- Rest-harrow, was it? Yes; their tangled roots Pluck at the harrow; halt the sharp harrow of thought, Even in old age. I never breathe their scent But I am back in boyhood, dreaming there Over some book, among the diligent bees, Until you join me, and we dream together. They called me lazy, then. Oddly enough It was that fight that stirred my mind to beat My bully at his books, and head the school; Blind rivalry, at first. By such fond tricks The invisible Power that shapes us--not ourselves-- Punishes, teaches, leads us gently on Like children, all our lives, until we grasp A sudden meaning and are born, through death Into full knowledge that our Guide was Love. Another picture shows those woods of ours, Around whose warm dark edges in the spring Primroses, knots of living sunlight, woke; And, always, you, their radiant shepherdess From Elfland, lead them rambling back for me, The dew still clinging to their golden fleece, Through these grey memory-mists. Another shows My old sun-dial. You say that it is known As "Isaac's dial" still. I took great pains To set it rightly. If it has not shifted 'Twill mark the time long after I am gone; Not like those curious water-clocks I made. Do you remember? They worked well at first; But the least particles in the water clogged The holes through which it dripped; and so, one day, We two came home so late that we were sent Supperless to our beds; and suffered much From the world's harshness, as we thought it then. Would God that we might taste that harshness now.