| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909. | | | | The Whistling Boy That Holds the Plough | | By George Crabbe (1754–1832) |
| | | THE WHISTLING 1 Boy that holds the plough | |
| Lured by the tale that soldiers tell, | |
| Resolves to part, yet knows not how | |
| To leave the land he loves so well. | |
| He now rejects the thought, and now | 5 |
| Looks o’er the lea, and sighs ‘Farewell!’ | |
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| Farewell! the pensive maiden cries. | |
| Who dreams of London, dreams awake— | |
| But when her favourite Lad she spies, | |
| With whom she loved her way to take, | 10 |
| Then Doubts within her soul arise, | |
| And equal Hopes her bosom shake! | |
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| Thus, like the Boy, and like the Maid, | |
| I wish to go, yet tarry here, | |
| And now resolved, and now afraid: | 15 |
| To minds disturb’d old views appear | |
| In melancholy charms array’d, | |
| And once, indifferent, now are dear. | |
| How shall I go, my fate to learn— | |
| And, oh! how taught shall I return? | 20 |
| | | Note 1. From The Farewell and Return, in Posthumous Poems. [back] | | |
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