Читать книгу Come Hither: A Collection of Rhymes and Poems for the Young of All Ages онлайн

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"Oh say that he's to England gone,

To buy her a wedding ring."

"But what will I say to her you lo'e dear,

Gin she cry, Why tarries my John?"

"Oh tell her I lie in Kirk-land fair,

And home shall never come."

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The cleanly rush of the mountain air,

And the mumbling, grumbling humble-bees,

Are the only things that wander there,

The pitiful bones are laid at ease,

The grass has grown in his tangled hair,

And a rambling bramble binds his knees.

To shrieve his soul from the pangs of hell,

The only requiem-bells that rang

Were the hare-bell and the heather-bell.

Hushed he is with the holy spell

In the gentle hymn the wind sang,

And he lies quiet, and sleeps well.

He is bleached and blanched with the summer sun;

The misty rain and the cold dew

Have altered him from the kingly one

(That his lady loved, and his men knew)

And dwindled him to a skeleton.

The vetches have twined about his bones,

The straggling ivy twists and creeps

In his eye-sockets; the nettle keeps

Vigil about him while he sleeps.