The Old Couple
(the workhouse—old style)
An old wife speaks:
The bracken withers day by day,
The furze is out of bloom.
Over the common the heather is grey,
And there's no gold left on the broom ;
And the least wind flutters a golden fleck
From three tall aspens that grow in the beck.
Yet, oh, I shall miss it to-morrow night.
The wild, rough sea of furze ;
And the cows coming down, looking large and white,
And the tink of each bell as it stirs,
The aspens brushing the tender sky,
And the whirr of the geese as they homeward fly.
'Tis the first grief ever I owned to mind
Until to-night, good neighbour;
For I could work when John went blind,
And I never dreaded labour;
And Willie grew so good a son.
We never fretted, I and John.
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