| |
| OH, many a leaf will fall to-night, | |
| As she wanders through the wood! | |
| And many an angry gust will break | |
| The dreary solitude. | |
| I wonder if she’s past the bridge, | 5 |
| Where Luggie moans beneath, | |
| While rain-drops clash in planted lines | |
| On rivulet and heath. | |
| Disease hath laid his palsied palm | |
| Upon my aching brow; | 10 |
| The headlong blood of twenty-one | |
| Is thin and sluggish now. | |
| ’T is nearly ten! A fearful night, | |
| Without a single star | |
| To light the shadow on her soul | 15 |
| With sparkle from afar: | |
| The moon is canopied with clouds, | |
| And her burden it is sore; | |
| What would wee Jackie do, if he | |
| Should never see her more? | 20 |
| Ay, light the lamp, and hang it up | |
| At the window fair and free; | |
| ’T will be a beacon on the hill | |
| To let your mother see. | |
| And trim it well, my little Ann, | 25 |
| For the night is wet and cold, | |
| And you know the weary, winding way | |
| Across the miry wold. | |
| All drench’d will be her simple gown, | |
| And the wet will reach her skin: | 30 |
| I wish that I could wander down, | |
| And the red quarry win, | |
| To take the burden from her back, | |
| And place it upon mine; | |
| With words of cheerful condolence, | 35 |
| Not utter’d to repine. | |
| You have a kindly mother, dears, | |
| As ever bore a child, | |
| And Heaven knows I love her well | |
| In passion undefil’d. | 40 |
| Ah me! I never thought that she | |
| Would brave a night like this, | |
| While I sat weaving by the fire | |
| A web of fantasies. | |
| How the winds beat this home of ours | 45 |
| With arrow-falls of rain; | |
| This lonely home upon the hill | |
| They beat with might and main. | |
| And ’mid the tempest one lone heart | |
| Anticipates the glow, | 50 |
| Whence, all her weary journey done, | |
| Shall happy welcome flow. | |
| ’T is after ten! O, were she here, | |
| Young man although I be, | |
| I could fall down upon her neck, | 55 |
| And weep right gushingly! | |
| I have not lov’d her half enough, | |
| The dear old toiling one, | |
| The silent watcher by my bed, | |
| In shadow or in sun. | 60 |
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