| |
| I PLUCKED pink blossoms from mine apple-tree | |
| And wore them all that evening in my hair: | |
| Then in due season when I went to see | |
| I found no apples there. | |
| |
| With dangling basket all along the grass | 5 |
| As I had come I went the self-same track: | |
| My neighbours mocked me while they saw me pass | |
| So empty-handed back. | |
| |
| Lilian and Lilias smiled in trudging by, | |
| Their heaped-up basket teazed me like a jeer; | 10 |
| Sweet-voiced they sang beneath the sunset sky, | |
| Their mother’s home was near. | |
| |
| Plump Gertrude passed me with her basket full, | |
| A stronger hand than hers helped it along; | |
| A voice talked with her through the shadows cool | 15 |
| More sweet to me than song. | |
| |
| Ah Willie, Willie, was my love less worth | |
| Than apples with their green leaves piled above? | |
| I counted rosiest apples on the earth | |
| Of far less worth than love. | 20 |
| |
| So once it was with me you stooped to talk, | |
| Laughing and listening in this very lane: | |
| To think that by this way we used to walk | |
| We shall not walk again! | |
| |
| I let my neighbours pass me, ones and twos | 25 |
| And groups; the latest said the night grew chill, | |
| And hastened: but I loitered, while the dews | |
| Fell fast I loitered still. | |
| |
