What is the theme/ central message of htis poem?

I PLAY’D with you ’mid cowslips blowing,


When I was six and you were four;


When garlands weaving, flower-balls throwing,


Were pleasures soon to please no more.


Through groves and meads, o’er grass and heather,


With little playmates, to and fro,


We wander’d hand in hand together;


But that was sixty years ago.





You grew a lovely roseate maiden,


And still our early love was strong;


Still with no care our days were laden,


They glided joyously along;


And I did love you very dearly,


How dearly words want power to show;


I thought your heart was touch’d as nearly;


But that was fifty years ago.





Then other lovers came around you,


Your beauty grew from year to year,


And many a splendid circle found you


The centre of its glittering sphere.


I saw you then, first vows forsaking,


On rank and wealth your hand bestow;


O, then I thought my heart was breaking!—


But that was forty years ago.





And I lived on, to wed another:


No cause she gave me to repine;


And when I heard you were a mother,


I did not wish the children mine.


My own young flock, in fair progression,


Made up a pleasant Christmas row:


My joy in them was past expression;


But that was thirty years ago.





You grew a matron plump and comely,


You dwelt in fashion’s brightest blaze;


My earthly lot was far more homely;


But I too had my festal days.


No merrier eyes have ever glisten’d


Around the hearth-stone’s wintry glow,


Than when my youngest child was christen’d;


But that was twenty years ago.





Time pass’d. My eldest girl was married,


And I am now a grandsire gray;


One pet of four years old I’ve carried


Among the wild-flower’d meads to play.


In our old fields of childish pleasure,


Where now, as then, the cowslips blow,


She fills her basket’s ample measure;


And that is not ten years ago.





But though first love’s impassion’d blindness


Has pass’d away in colder light,


I still have thought of you with kindness,


And shall do, till our last good-night.


The ever-rolling silent hours


Will bring a time we shall not know,


When our young days of gathering flowers


Will be an hundred years ago.

What is the theme/ central message of htis poem?
It's one man's homage to his first love. As they grew up, their paths split -- she evidently married for money which nearly broke his heart. He married someone else and found happiness and contentment in his family -- wife, children and grandchildren.


And he bears his first love no regrets. Whatta guy!
Reply:Fond memories of his childhood and first love.
Reply:I think its about his First Love. and the message is that your First Love is someone you'll never forget.