To-day's her birthday: I'll not say which one,--
But I have known her twenty years or more
When courtship days were joyously begun,
And she had reached her sixteenth year, before.
And so her age is no concern of mine:
She may have dropped a birthday now and then,
But surely she's improved with age like wine:
I wouldn't wish her in her _teens_ again.
And she's my Pal! O, yes, we love, of course!
But feel, besides, the joy of comradeship
That finds expression at Love's very source
In language of the heart--not of the lip.
And so she is my everlasting pride:
To Beauty's very pinnacle she's grown!
Thru life we'll seek our pleasures side by side;
Her heart athrob with love for me alone.