A Selection of Original Songs, Scraps, Etc., by Ned Farmer/The Gypsy Mother
The Gypsy Mother.
Published as a song, 1846.
The music by Stephen Glover, Esq.
She sat, the statue of despair,
Her silken black dishevell'd hair
In wild disorder hung, while she
Bowed 'neath her load of misery.
Her deeply dark, yet tearless eye
Was prayer-like lifted to the sky,
As she, in piteous accents wild,
Bewail'd her dying vagrant child.
It was a Gipsy's form and face,
Who in that wild and lonely place,
Had sat her down in madness, o'er
The fever'd creature that she bore.
Oh! 'twas a saddening sight, to see
The mother's yearning agony,
As she, in piteous accents wild
Bewail'd her dying vagrant child.
And see! she clasps, with trembling arm,
In maniac hope to keep it warm,
The Babe that ne'er again may stir,
And yet that Babe was all to her.
Where be her kindred? where its sire?
To sooth her blighted brain of fire;
Heard ye that piercing outcry wild?
She knows 'tis dead—that Gipsy Child!
I wish fervently that mankind were obliged to make into parcels all (or most of) the unasked advice they give. I rather opine that the cost of the paper and string, together with the trouble of directing, would put a partial stop to its indulgences.