C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Walter Learned (1847–1915)

JUST as I thought I was growing old,

Ready to sit in my easy-chair,

To watch the world with a heart grown cold,

And smile at a folly I would not share,

Rose came by with a smile for me,—

And I am thinking that forty year

Isn’t the age that it seems to be,

When two pretty brown eyes are near.

Bless me, of life it is just the prime!—

A fact that I hope she will understand;—

And forty year is a perfect rhyme

To dark-brown eyes and a pretty hand.

These gray hairs are by chance, you see,—

Boys are sometimes gray, I am told.—

Rose came by with a smile for me,

Just as I thought I was getting old.