Lads that waste the light in sighing
In the dark should sigh no more;
Night should ease a lover’s sorrow;
Therefore, since I go to-morrow,
Pity me before.
In the land to which I travel,
The far dwelling, let me say–
Once, if here the couch is gravel,
In a kinder bed I lay,
And the breast the darnel smothers
Rested once upon another’s
When it was not clay.
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‘Terence, this is stupid stuff!
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear,To see the rate you drink your beer.But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,It gives a chap the belly-ache!The cow, the old cow, she is dead;It sleeps well, the horned head…We poor lads, ’tis our turn nowTo hear such tunes as killed the cow!Pretty friendship ’tis to rhymeYour…
O thou that from thy mansion
Dost send abroad thy children,And then dost call them home,That men and tribes and nationsAnd all thy hand hath madeMay shelter them from sunshineIn thine eternal shade:We now to peace and darknessAnd earth and thee restoreThy creature that thou madestAnd wilt cast forth no more.
‘Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town
The hawthorn sprinkled up and downShould charge the land with snow.Spring will not wait the loiterer’s timeWho keeps so long away;So others wear the broom and climbThe hedgerows heaped with may.Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,Gold that I never see;Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedgeThat will not shower on me.
The street sounds to the soldiers’ tread,
A single redcoat turns his head,He turns and looks at me.My man, from sky to sky’s so far,We never crossed before;Such leagues apart the world’s ends are,We’re like to meet no more;What thoughts at heart have you and IWe cannot stop to tell;But dead or living, drunk or dry,Soldier, I wish you well.
‘Here the hangman stops his cart:
Fare you well, for ill fare I:Live, lads, and I will die.‘Oh, at home had I but stayed‘Prenticed to my father’s trade,Had I stuck to plane and adze,I had not been lost, my lads.‘Then I might have built perhapsGallows-trees for other chaps,Never dangled on my own,Had I left but ill alone.‘Now, you see, they hang…
The half-moon westers low, my love,
And wide apart lie we, my love,And seas between the twain.I know not if it rains, my love,In the land where you do lie;And oh, so sound you sleep, my love,You know no more than I.