Robert Louis Stevenson

A Child's Garden of Verses. Envoys 1. To Willie and Henrietta

    If two may read aright 
    These rhymes of old delight 
    And house and garden play, 
You too, my cousins, and you only, may.

    You in a garden green 
    With me were king and queen, 
    Were hunter, soldier, tar, 
And all the thousand things that children are.

    Now in the elders' seat 
    We rest with quiet feet, 
    And from the window-bay 
We watch the children, our successors, play.

    "Time was," the golden head 
    Irrevocably said; 
    But time which one can bind, 
While flowing fast away, leaves love behind.