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Bonnie Joann, and other poems cover

Bonnie Joann, and other poems

Chapter 35: A YOUNG MAN’S SONG
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About This Book

The collection gathers dialect songs and lyrics rooted in Angus, depicting rural and coastal life through concise, musical poems. Seasonal labor, local customs, Hallowe’en rituals, and the coming and going of ships provide recurring settings. Voices range from wry, comic sketches of small‑town behaviour to elegiac meditations on longing, loss, and memory, often anchored by vivid natural imagery and plainspoken phrasing. Short narrative pieces and lyrical fragments alternate, and the volume closes with a couple of poems presented in standard English.

POEMS IN ENGLISH

A YOUNG MAN’S SONG

My girl is true, my girl is sweet,
When in the town we chance to meet
It almost seems to me as though
A rose were growing in the street.

And if I see her in the lane,
Though winter’s freezing might and main,
I half suspect, in spite of all,
That Spring’s upon us once again.

When luck is out and things look blue
And folks are up against me too,
There’s naught in that to cast me down
Because she trusts me through and through.

And at the altar-railings when
My faith and truth I swear, oh then
I’ll pray, “God strike me if I fail—
So help me! World without end. Amen!”