Your Own Fair Youth
Your own fair youth, you care so little for it—
Smiling towards Heaven, you would not stay the advances
Of time and change upon your happiest fancies.
I keep your golden hour, and will restore it.
If ever, in time to come, you would explore it—
Your old self, whose thoughts went like last year’s pansies,
Look unto me; no mirror keeps its glances;
In my unfailing praises now I store it.
To guard all joys of yours from Time’s estranging,
I shall be then a treasury where your gay,
Happy, and pensive past unaltered is.
I shall be then a garden charmed from changing,
In which your June has never passed away.
Walk there awhile among my memories.