Third Collection. Kindness
Good Meäster Collins heärd woone day A man a-talkèn, that did zay It woulden answer to be kind, He thought, to vo’k o’ grov’lèn mind, Vor they would only teäke it wrong, That you be weak an’ they be strong. “No,” cried the goodman, “never mind, Let vo’k be thankless,—you be kind; Don’t do your good for e’thly ends At man’s own call vor man’s amends. Though souls befriended should remain As thankless as the sea vor raïn. On them the good’s a-lost ’tis true, But never can be lost to you. Look on the cool-feäced moon at night Wi’ light-vull ring, at utmost height, A-castèn down, in gleamèn strokes, His beams upon the dim-bough’d woaks, To show the cliff a-risèn steep, To show the stream a-vallèn deep, To show where windèn roads do leäd, An’ prickly thorns do ward the meäd. While sheädes o’ boughs do flutter dark Upon the woak-trees’ moon-bright bark, There in the lewth, below the hill, The nightèngeäle, wi’ ringèn bill, Do zing among the soft-aïr’d groves, While up below the house’s oves The maïd, a-lookèn vrom her room Drough window, in her youthvul bloom, Do listen, wi’ white ears among Her glossy heäirlocks, to the zong. If, then, the while the moon do light The lwonesome zinger o’ the night, His cwold-beam’d light do seem to show The prowlèn owls the mouse below. What then? Because an evil will, Ov his sweet good, mid meäke zome ill, Shall all his feäce be kept behind The dark-brow’d hills to leave us blind?”
William Barnes’s other poems:
