I love old lace, tea-brown on Auntie's sleeves,
The while she crochets mats and d'oileys white
In rose and shell and lilies lost in leaves.
Her needles gleam like rapiers courtier-bright.
Oh, Auntie, very straight and stern of face,
Makes me see ruffled ladies sweet with grace,
Because she wears old lace.
My mother had a cloak of sapphire blue
Lined with soft folding silk of mellow gold.
She wore it at a ball when I was two.
Its satin decked with yellow lace and old.
When from my girlhood's dreams my spirit wake
She made it mine, and trie Love stopped to stroke
My mother's sapphire cloak.
Grandma, whose father was a Spanish bold,
With swashing sea-brown locks and sunburnt eyes
Blue as the skies, black lace, demure and old,
Sewed on her bonnet. Ah, I still can prize
Memories of violets amid black lace
Rustling with age -- her stately old embrace,
And no curl out of place.
I made my small pink dear a dolly's dress
Of brown and yellow lace I found to-day,
Hidden away within a cedar press
Choked with old treasures of a bygone play.
And while she watched I panged with sudden fear,
Seeing great Grandmamma in white lace peer
Out of my small pink dear.
First published in The Sydney Mail, 24 October 1923
