And now she's at the Doctor's door, The Doctor at the casement shows His glimmering eyes that peep and dose! And one hand rubs his old night-cap. "Oh Doctor! Doctor! where's my Johnny!" "I'm here, what is't you want with me?" "Oh Sir! you know I'm Betty Foy, And I have lost my poor dear Boy, You know him-him you often see; He's not so wise as some folks be." "O woe is me! O woe is me! She stops, she stands, she looks about, Poor Betty! it would ease her pain If she had heart to knock again; -The clock strikes three-a dismal knell ! Then up along the town she hies, No wonder if her senses fail, This piteous news so much it shocked her, She quite forgot to send the Doctor, And now she's high upon the down, She listens, but she cannot hear The foot of horse, the voice of man; The streams with softest sounds are flowing, The grass you almost hear it growing, You hear it now if e'er you can. VOL. I. The Owlets through the long blue night Fond lovers! yet not quite hob nob, That echoes far from hill to hill. Poor Betty now has lost all hope, And now she sits her down and weeps; Such tears she never shed before; And we will ne'er o'erload thee more." A thought is come into her head: Then up she springs, as if on wings; She thinks no more of deadly sin; The last of all her thoughts would be O Reader! now that I might tell Perhaps, and no unlikely thought! To lay his hands upon a star, Perhaps he's turned himself about, And now, perhaps, he's hunting sheep, In five months' time, should he be seen, Perhaps, with head and heels on fire, And like the very soul of evil, He's galloping away, away, And so he'll gallop on for aye, The bane of all that dread the devil! I to the Muses have been bound These fourteen years, by strong indentures: O gentle Muses! let me tell But half of what to him befel, He surely met with strange adventures. O gentle Muses! is this kind? |