e ringers rang with a will, and he gave the
ringers a crown.
But the first that ever I bare was dead before he was
born,
Shadow and shine is life, little Annie, flower and
thorn.

XVI.
That was the first time, too, that ever I thought of
death.
There lay the sweet little body that never had drawn
a breath.
I had not wept, little Anne, not since I had been a
wife;
But I wept like a child that day, for the babe had
fought for his life.

XVII.
His dear little face was troubled, as if with anger or
pain:
I look'd at the still little body--his trouble had all
been in vain.
For Willy I cannot weep, I shall see him another
morn:
But I wept like a child for the child that was dead
before he was born.

XVIII.
But he cheer'd me, my good man, for he seldom said me
nay:
Kind, like a man, was he; like a man, too, would have
his way:
Never jealous--not he: we had many a happy
year;
And he died, and I could not weep--my own time
seem'd so near.

XIX.
But I wish'd it had been God's will that I, too, then
could have died:
I began to be tired a little, and fain had slept at his
side.
And that was ten years back, or more, if I don't
forget:
But as to the children, Annie, they're all about me
yet.

XX.
Pattering over the boards, my Annie who left me at
two,
Patter she goes, my own little Annie, an Annie like
you:
Pattering over the boards, she comes and goes at her
will,
While Harry is in the five-acre and Charlie ploughing
the hill.

XXI.
And Harry and Charlie, I hear them too--they sing
to their team:
Often they come to the door in a pleasant kind of a
dream.
They come and sit by my chair, they hover about my
bed--
I am not always certain if they be alive or
dead.

XXII.
And yet I know for a truth, there's none of them
left alive;
For Harry went at sixty, your father at sixty-five:
And Willy, my eldest born, at nigh threescore and
ten;
I knew them all as babies, and now they're elderly
men.