University of Virginia Library

ON THE HILL

HUSBAND AND WIFE
H.

W.
There Brown's folk all guide
Their new boat for a ride.
You may see their oars play
With the spray at the side.

H.
Out there are the hawthorns, where blossoms now fade,
Some here, and some there, with less shelter than shade,
The old ones, like fathers, now ready to fall;
The younger, like children, from greater to small;
And some are as prim as a man in his prime.
And some with their shroud
That west winds have bow'd,
As eastward they set
With their wet-shedding cloud.

W.
Well now here we are, on the uppermost ground,
Where the thyme-bedded hillocks are swelling so round,
But what place is this with the banks lying low,
And the big mossy flintstones in straight-reaching row.

H.
Why here, by the tale that poor father would tell,
A beacon did stand,
To light with a brand,
And call men to blows
If their foes were to land.

There's a cloud o'er the lowland, that floats at our height,
With its shadow o'ersweeping the ground in its flight,
W.
Now it climbs o'er the tow'r, now o'ershadows the boughs,
Now it leaps o'er the stream, now it darkens the cows,
'Tis now on the rook'ry, and now on the ricks,
And now comes to catch
Up our own little hatch,
And shade from the sun
The red tun on our thatch.

W.
There's a man on a horse, oh! he spurs him well on,
Is somebody ill then? or where is he gone?
There's a maid by the buttercups there,—and 'tis who?
Jane Hine I can tell by her skirt of pale blue;
And now she is slipping along by the slope,
And now she looks round
In a fright, at the sound,
Of the bull that is blaring
And tearing the ground.