 | The Poems of John Clare |  |
THE SLY MAID
The ballad in the ploughman's pocket wearsA greater fame than poets ever knew;
The maiden claims his present from the fairs
And gets it all by heart as lover's due.
354
She blushes deep at every praise she hears;
Yet when she meets a sweetheart in the way,
She's filled with thoughts and flurried all the day.
She cannot do her work nor make her paste,
But puts the miller's eye out in her haste.
The roads are clean as pennies all the way
And show the shoe-nails where the water lay;
So without pattens forth the maiden goes
To show her last new gown and Sunday clothes.
| The Poems of John Clare | |