Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Thomas Humphry Ward, ed. The English Poets. 1880–1918.rnVol. V. Browning to Rupert Brooke

William Barnes (1801–1886)

The Widow’s House

I WENT hwome in the dead o’ the night,

When the vields wer all empty o’ vo’k,

An’ the tuns at their cool-winded height

Wer all dark, an’ all cwold ’ithout smoke;

An’ the heads o’ the trees that I pass’d

Wer a-swaÿèn wi’ low ruslèn sound,

An’ the doust wer a-whirl’d wi’ the blast,

Aye, a smeech wi’ the wind on the ground.

Then I come by the young widow’s hatch,

Down below the wold elem’s tall head,

But noo vingers did lift up the latch,

Vor they all wer so still as the dead;

But inside, to a tree a-meäde vast,

Wer the childern’s light swing, a-hung low,

An’ a-rock’d by the brisk blowèn blast,

Aye, a-swung by the win’ to an fro.

Vor the childern, wi’ pillow-borne head,

Had vorgotten their swing on the lawn,

An’ their father, asleep wi’ the dead,

Had vorgotten his work at the dawn;

An’ their mother, a vew stilly hours,

Had vorgotten where he slept so sound,

Where the wind wer a-sheäkèn the flow’rs,

Aye, the blast the feäir buds on the ground.