The bobolink sung to ’is mate,
The doves wuz softly cooin’,
I heard the clinkin’ of the gate,
When Joe first come a-wooin’.
I stood beside the lilock bush
(The sun was slowly sinkin’);
My cheeks wuz all to once a-blush,
When I heard the gate-latch clinkin’.
Fer Joe he wuz so good an’ kind
(Tho’ such a bashful lover),
No truer friend you’d ever find
In all the wide world over.
He sez, “Ez I wuz goin’ by,
I seed yer hair so shiny,
Yer eyes ez blue ez summer sky,
Yer cheeks ez red’s a piny;
“My heart my throat come thrummin’ in,
The dusk it struck my fancy;
I couldn’t help a-comin’ in
An’ speakin’ to ye, Nancy.”
An’ then ’e sez—’e sez—O me!
My feelins gits unruly—
He’d liked me all along, you see;
I know he loved me truly.
An’ I wuz but an orphan, too,
A-workin’ fer my livin’,
Without a kith er kin I knew,
An’ jest myself to give ’im.
An’ when iz voice sunk soft away—
A kind o’ tremblin’ in it—
The words I tried so hard to say
Kep’ chokin’ fer a minute.
The lilock blossoms wuz in blow,
So sweet, with dewdrops beaded;
I handed ’im a bunch, an’ Joe
No other answer needed.
The year it passed, the war wuz come,
The soldiers fast enrollin’;
I heard the beatin’ of the drum,
I thought like church-bell tollin’.
I stood beside the lilock bush,
The shadows round me lyin’,
An’ all the evenin’ in a hush,
Except the wind a-sighin’;
An’ down the lane the whip-’oor-will
So sad an’ mournful callin’—
Somehow it wuz so dreadful still,
The tears would keep a-fallin’.
An’ then he come—so brave an’ strong,
An’ yet ’is lips a-quiv’rin’;
I guesst ’is errant all along,
An’ couldn’t help a-shiv’rin’.
O friend, the year went round—went round—
But this’ll tell you better;
This withered lilock some one found,
An’ sent me in a letter.
Ah, well! there’s more than me that know
How sad is war, an’ fearful,
An’ since the good God plans it so,
I must try to be cheerful;
But when the lilocks air in bloom,
An’ when the day’s a-dyin’,
I creep off to my little room
An’ have a fit of cryin’.