17

FIRST SPRING MORNING

A CHILD'S POEM.

LOOK! Look! the spring is come:
O feel the gentle air,

That wanders thro' the boughs to burst
The thick buds everywhere!
The birds are glad to see
The high unclouded sun:
Winter is fled away, they sing,
The gay time is begun.

Adown the meadows green Let us go dance and play, And look for violets in the lane, And ramble far away

To gather primroses,

That in the woodland grow,

And hunt for oxlips, or if yet

The blades of bluebells show:

There the old woodman gruff
Hath half the coppice cut,

And weaves the hurdles all day long
Beside his willow hut.

We'll steal on him, and then

Startle him, all with glee

Singing our song of winter fled

And summer soon to be.

18

A VILLAGER

THERE was no lad handsomer than Willie was
The day that he came to father's house :
There was none had an eye as soft an' blue
As Willie's was, when he came to woo.

To a labouring life though bound thee be,
An' I on my father's ground live free,
I'll take thee, I said, for thy manly grace,
Thy gentle voice an' thy loving face.

'Tis forty years now since we were wed:
We are ailing an' grey needs not to be said:
But Willie's eye is as blue an' soft

As the day when he wooed me in father's croft.

Yet changed am I in body an' mind,
For Willie to me has ne'er been kind:
Merrily drinking an' singing with the men
He 'ud come home late six nights o' the se'n.

An' since the children be grown an' gone
He 'as shunned the house an' left me lone :
An' less an' less he brings me in

Of the little he now has strength to win.

The roof lets through the wind an' the wet, An' master won't mend it with us in 's debt: An' all looks every day more worn,

An' the best of my gowns be shabby an' torn.

No wonder if words hav' a-grown to blows;
That matters not while nobody knows :
For love him I shall to the end of life,
An' be, as I swore, his own true wife.

An' when I am gone, he'll turn, an' see
His folly an' wrong, an' be sorry for me:
An' come to me there in the land o' bliss
To give me the love I looked for in this.

19

WEEP not to-day: why should this sadness be? Learn in present fears

To o'ermaster those tears

That unhindered conquer thee.

Think on thy past valour, thy future praise:

Up, sad heart, nor faint

In ungracious complaint,

Or a prayer for better days.

Daily thy life shortens, the grave's dark peace Draweth surely nigh,

When good-night is good-bye;

For the sleeping shall not cease.

Fight, to be found fighting: nor far away
Deem, nor strange thy doom.
Like this sorrow 'twill come,
And the day will be to-day.

M

PREVIOUS EDITION

Collected for the first time in 1899. Smith, Elder & Co. Vol. II. See notes at end of that volume.