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.

XXIII.
For mine is a time of peace, it is not often I
grieve;