Page:Fugitive Poetry 1600-1878.djvu/484

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THE PILGRIM.
A peach-red cheek, with a dimpled.chin,And a loving heart, oh! so pure within—How sweet to sit once more beside her,Calmly sucking a brandy spider.
Cunningly twisted, and curled, and braided,Her brow with its golden hair is shaded;In every gesture a sparkling graceLights up with rapture the maiden's face;And the birds themselves burst into songAs her tiny feet tripped gay along;But we—quick slipped from that bright spot,And, trembling, called for something hot.
She, too, is gone, and I still remainDragging along at my weary chain;No more I'll bask in her eyes' sweet glance,Nor watch her form through the mazy dance;I backward glance at those memories green,And sadly murmur, "It might have been"—It might have been, oh! it might have been,But a parent stern stepped in between.
Fast gathered home to his fellow clay,That parent stern hath passed away;His peach-cheeked child, with the laughing eye,Cares little, I ween, for my doleful sigh;For her hair's as curled—her cheek's as red,As when at her feet my vows were shed—While I to a shadow vile am grown,She'd kick down the beam at fifteen stone!
The Pilgrim.
The night was dark, and drear the heath, And sudden howled the wind,When o'er the wold a pilgrim strayed, Some friendly inn to find.
He hastened to a feeble light, That glimmered from afar,By which he viewed a sign project, And found it was the Star.
Good fare was there for man and horse, And rest for weary bones;A famed and long established house, And kept by Mary Jones.
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