CASHEL OF MUNSTER
by: Samuel Ferguson (1810-1886)
- D
wed you without herds, without money or rich array,
- And Id wed you on a dewy morn at day-dawn gray;
- My bitter woe it is, love, that we are not far away
- In Cashel town, tho the bare deal board were our marriage-bed
this day!
-
- O fair maid, remember the green hill-side,
- Remember how I hunted about the valleys wide;
- Time now has worn me; my locks are turnd to gray;
- The year is scarce and I am poor--but send me not, love,
away!
-
- O deem not my blood is of base strain, my girl;
- O think not my birth was as the birth of a churl;
- Marry me and prove me, and say soon you will
- That noble blood is written on my right side still.
-
- My purse holds no red gold, no coin of the silver white;
- No herds are mine to drive through the long twilight;
- But the pretty girl that would take me, all bare tho
I be and lone,
- O, Id take her with me kindly to the county Tyrone!
-
- O my girl, I can see tis in trouble you are;
- And O my girl, I see tis your peoples reproach
you bear!
- --I am a girl in trouble for his sake with whom I fly,
And, O, may no other maiden know such reproach as I!
"Cashel of Munster" is
reprinted from The Oxford Book of English Verse. Ed. Arthur
Thomas Quiller-Couch. Oxford: Clarendon, 1919. |
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POEMS BY SAMUEL FERGUSON |
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