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| OH, lovely Mary Donnelly, it ’s you I love the best! | |
| If fifty girls were round you I ’d hardly see the rest. | |
| Be what it may the time of day, the place be where it will, | |
| Sweet looks of Mary Donnelly, they bloom before me still. | |
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| Her eyes like mountain water that ’s flowing on a rock, | 5 |
| How clear they are, how dark they are! and they give me many a shock. | |
| Red rowans warm in sunshine and wetted with a show’r, | |
| Could ne’er express the charming lip that has me in its pow’r. | |
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| Her nose is straight and handsome, her eyebrows lifted up, | |
| Her chin is very neat and pert, and smooth like a china cup, | 10 |
| Her hair’s the brag of Ireland, so weighty and so fine; | |
| It ’s rolling down upon her neck, and gather’d in a twine. | |
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| The dance o’last Whit-Monday night exceeded all before; | |
| No pretty girl for miles about was missing from the floor; | |
| But Mary kept the belt of love, and O but she was gay! | 15 |
| She danced a jig, she sung a song, that took my heart away. | |
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| When she stood up for dancing, her steps were so complete, | |
| The music nearly kill’d itself to listen to her feet; | |
| The fiddler moan’d his blindness, he heard her so much prais’d, | |
| But bless’d himself he was n’t deaf when once her voice she rais’d. | 20 |
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| And evermore I ’m whistling or lilting what you sung, | |
| Your smile is always in my heart, your name beside my tongue; | |
| But you’ve as many sweethearts as you’d count on both your hands, | |
| And for myself there ’s not a thumb or little finger stands. | |
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| Oh, you ’re the flower o’ womankind in country or in town; | 25 |
| The higher I exalt you, the lower I ’m cast down. | |
| If some great lord should come this way, and see your beauty bright, | |
| And you to be his lady, I ’d own it was but right. | |
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| O might we live together in a lofty palace hall, | |
| Where joyful music rises, and where scarlet curtains fall! | 30 |
| O might we live together in a cottage mean and small, | |
| With sods of grass the only roof, and mud the only wall! | |
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| O lovely Mary Donnelly, your beauty’s my distress: | |
| It ’s far too beauteous to be mine, but I ’ll never wish it less. | |
| The proudest place would fit your face, and I am poor and low; | 35 |
| But blessings be about you, dear, wherever you may go! | |
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