"With burnish'd brand and musketoon, So gallantly you come, I read you for a bold Dragoon, That lists the tuck of drum." "I list no more the tuck of drum, No more the trumpet hear; But when the beetle sounds his hum, My comrades take the spear." "And, O! though Brignall banks be fair, And Greta woods be gay, Yet mickle must the maiden dare, Would reign my Queen of May! "Maiden! a nameless life I lead, A nameless death I'll die; The fiend, whose lantern lights the mead, Were better mate than I! And when I'm with my comrades met, Beneath the greenwood bough, What once we were we all forget, Nor think what we are now." "Yet Brignall banks are fresh and fair, BARBARA ALLEN'S CRUELTY. IN Scarlet towne, where I was borne, Made every youth crye, Wel-awaye! All in the merrye month of May, When green buds they were swellin, Young Jemmye Grove on his death-bed lay, For love of Barbara Allen. He sent his man unto her then, To the town where she was dwellin; "You must come to my master deare, Giff your name be Barbara Allen. "For death is printed on his face, "Though death be printed on his face, Yet little better shall he be So slowly, slowly, she came up, He turned his face unto her strait, "If on your death-bed you doe lye, 66 And spied the corps a coming: 'Laye down, laye down the corps," she sayd, "That I may look upon him." With scornful eye she looked downe, When he was dead, and laid in grave, "Hard-harted creature him to slight, O that I had beene more kind to him, She, on her death-bed as she laye, That she did ere denve him. "Farewell," she sayd, "ye virgins all, ALICE BRAND. From THE LADY OF THE LAKE. Sir Walter Scott. I. MERRY it is in the good greenwood, When the mavis1 and merle 2 are singing, When the deer sweeps by, and the hounds are in cry, And the hunter's horn is ringing. "O Alice Brand, my native land Is lost for love of you; And we must hold by wood and wold, 66 As outlaws wont to do. "O Alice, 'twas all for thy locks so bright, And for vest of pall, thy fingers small, That wont on harp to stray, A cloak must shear from the slaughtered deer, To keep the cold away." O Richard! if my brother died, "If pall and vair1 no more I wear, "And, Richard, if our lot be hard, And lost thy native land, Still Alice has her own Richard, And he his Alice Brand.” II. 'Tis merry, 'tis merry, in good greenwood, On the beech's pride, and oak's brown side, Like wind in the porch of a ruined church, "Why sounds yon stroke on beech and oak, Our moonlight circle's screen? |