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Time's Laughingstocks, and Other Verses

Год написания книги
2017
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Mills are strumming,
Apples fine,
And the cider made to-year will be as wine.

II

Yet, not viewing
What’s a-doing
Here around
Is it thrills me,
And so fills me
That I bound
Like a ball or leaf or lamb along the ground.

III

Tremble not now
At your lot now,
Silly soul!
Hosts have sped them
Quick to wed them,
Great and small,
Since the first two sighing half-hearts made a whole.

IV

Yet I wonder,
Will it sunder
Her from me?
Will she guess that
I said “Yes,” – that
His I’d be,
Ere I thought she might not see him as I see!

V

Old brown gable,
Granary, stable,
Here you are!
O my mother,
Can another
Ever bar
Mine from thy heart, make thy nearness seem afar?

THE FIDDLER

The fiddler knows what’s brewing
To the lilt of his lyric wiles:
The fiddler knows what rueing
Will come of this night’s smiles!

He sees couples join them for dancing,
And afterwards joining for life,
He sees them pay high for their prancing
By a welter of wedded strife.

He twangs: “Music hails from the devil,
Though vaunted to come from heaven,
For it makes people do at a revel
What multiplies sins by seven.

“There’s many a heart now mangled,
And waiting its time to go,
Whose tendrils were first entangled
By my sweet viol and bow!”

THE HUSBAND’S VIEW

“Can anything avail
Beldame, for my hid grief? —
Listen: I’ll tell the tale,
It may bring faint relief! —

“I came where I was not known,
In hope to flee my sin;
And walking forth alone
A young man said, ‘Good e’en.’

“In gentle voice and true
He asked to marry me;
‘You only – only you
Fulfil my dream!’ said he.

“We married o’ Monday morn,
In the month of hay and flowers;
My cares were nigh forsworn,
And perfect love was ours.

“But ere the days are long
Untimely fruit will show;
My Love keeps up his song,
Undreaming it is so.

“And I awake in the night,
And think of months gone by,
And of that cause of flight
Hidden from my Love’s eye.

“Discovery borders near,
And then!.. But something stirred? —
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