Threads of Grey and Gold — The Old and the New

The Old and the New Grandmother sat at her spinning wheel In the dust of the long ago, And listened, with scarlet dyeing her cheeks, For the step she had learned to know.

A courtly lover, was he who came, With frill and ruffle and curl-- They dressed so queerly in the days When grandmother was a girl!

"Knickerbockers" they called them then, When they spoke of the things at all-- Grandfather wore them, buckled and trim, When he sallied forth to call.

Grandmother's eyes were youthful then-- His "guiding stars," he said;

While she demurely watched her wheel And spun with a shining thread.

Frill, and ruffle, and curl are gone, But the "knickers" are with us still-- And so is love and the spinning wheel, But we ride it now--if you will!

In grandfather's "knickers" I sit and watch For the gleam of a lamp afar;

And my heart still turns, as theirs, methinks, To my wheel and my guiding star.