Explore "Time's Reversals a Daughter's Paradox" by Alice Meynell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
To his devoted heart*
Who, young, had loved his ageing mate for life,
In late lone years Time gave the elder's part,
Time gave the bridegroom's boast, Time gave a younger wife.
A wilder prank and plot
Time soon will promise, threaten, offering me
Impossible things that Nature suffers not --
A daughter's riper mind, a child's seniority.
Oh, by my filial tears / Mourned all too young, Father! On this my head / Time yet will force at last the longer years, / Claiming some strange respect for me from you, the dead.
Nay, nay! Too new to know / Time's conjuring is, too great to understand.
Memory has not died; it leaves me so -- / Leaning a fading brow on your unfaded hand.
*Dr. Johnson outlived by thirty years his wife, who was twenty years / his senior.