Why, Pigot, complain Of this damsel's disdain, Why thus in despair do you fret? For months you may try, Yet, believe me, a sigh Will never obtain a coquette.
Doubling and doubling with laborious walk, Who, that has gained at length the wished-for Height, This brief this simple wayside Call can slight, And rests not thankful? Whether cheered by talk...
A power is on me, and my soul must speak To thee, thou grey, grey man, whom I behold With those white-headed children. I am bold To commune with thy setting, and to wreak...
Murmur of living! Stir of existence! Soul of the world! Make, oh make yourselves felt To the dying spirit of Youth. Come, like the breath of the spring. Leave not a human soul...
Right here at home, boys, in old Hoosierdom, Where strangers allus joke us when they come, And brag o' their old States and interprize - Yit settle here; and 'fore they realize,...
Leave the early bells at chime, Leave the kindled hearth to blaze, Leave the trellised panes where children linger out the waking-time, Leave the forms of sons and fathers trudging through the misty ways,...
Robin to beggars with a curse, Throws the last shilling in his purse; And when the coachman comes for pay, The rogue must call another day. Grave Harry, when the poor are pressing...
No! those days are gone away, And their hours are old and gray, And their minutes buried all Under the down-trodden pall Of the leaves of many years:...
When shaws beene sheene, and shradds full fayre, And leaves both large and longe, Itt is merrye walkyng in the fayre forrest To heare the small birdes songe.
The Text.--The only text of this ballad is in the Percy Folio, from which it is here rendered in modern spelling. Although the original is written continuously, it is almost impossible not to suspect an omission after 2.2. Chil...
The Text is modernised from a MS. in the University Library, Cambridge (MS. Ff. v. 48), which belongs to the middle of the fifteenth century. We have also a single leaf of another MS. version, of about the same date, preserved ...
The Text is modernised, as far as is possible, from a MS. of about 1500 in the University Library at Cambridge (Ee. 4, 35). The ballad was first printed therefrom by Ritson in his Robin Hood (1795), vol. i. p. 81, on the whole ...
The Text is modernised from the Percy Folio MS. (c. 1650). At two points, after 8.3 and 18.2, half a page of the MS., or about nine stanzas, is missing--torn out and 'used by maids to light the fire' in Humphry Pitt's house, wh...