18
A VILLAGER
There was no lad handsomer than Willie was
The day that he came to father’s house:
There was none had an eye as soft an’ blue
As Willie’s was, when he came to woo.
To a labouring life though bound thee be,
An’ I on my father’s ground live free,
I’ll take thee, I said, for thy manly grace,
Thy gentle voice an’ thy loving face.
’Tis forty years now since we were wed:
We are ailing an’ grey needs not to be said:
But Willie’s eye is as blue an’ soft
As the day when he wooed me in father’s croft.
Yet changed am I in body an’ mind,
For Willie to me has ne’er been kind:
Merrily drinking an’ singing with the men
He ’ud come home late six nights o’ the se’n.
An’ since the children be grown an’ gone
He ’as shunned the house an’ left me lone:
An’ less an’ less he brings me in
Of the little he now has strength to win.
The roof lets through the wind an’ the wet,
An’ master won’t mend it with us in’s debt:
An’ all looks every day more worn,
An’ the best of my gowns be shabby an’ torn.
No wonder if words hav’ a-grown to blows;
That matters not while nobody knows:
For love him I shall to the end of life,
An’ be, as I swore, his own true wife.
An’ when I am gone, he’ll turn, an’ see
His folly an’ wrong, an’ be sorry for me:
An’ come to me there in the land o’ bliss
To give me the love I looked for in this.