Grandmamma had a lover once,
And he forgot and he ceased to woo.
"Did you mind. Grandma, when he rode away"?
And Grandma chuckled, as old folk do.
"Friendship is fickle and love has wings,
I have got to the other side of things."
Grandmamma, is so old her chin
And her nose, you know, they almost meet;
Yet sometimes I fancy that little things
Stir in the grasses about her feet,
And if friends forsake her and kin grow cold
The fairies love her -- altho' she's old.
For all her life the fairy folk
Have come to Grandma with tale and song.
And I think when she dreams in the summer sun
The fairies stay there the whole day long.
Tho' grown-ups are weary and children stray
The fairies are with her the live long day.
Grandma is seventy, I am four,
Yet I wonder someday when Grandma dies
Will she leave the fairy folk to me,
And the magic spectacles from her eyes?
A fat black cat and a hazel switch,
For she is the nicest kind of witch!
I don't think I'd mind being old at all,
With nobody caring, if I could show
That the fairies came to me day and night
With the wonderful things that fairies know.
Roads thro' the fern, and secret things
That are only carried on unseen wings.
First published in The Courier-Mail, 23 June 1934
