Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.
As I Came from Walsingham
By Childs English and Scottish Ballads“A
Of Walsingham,
Met you not with my true-love
By the way as you came?”
That have met many a one,
As I came from the holy-land,
That have come, that have gone?”
But as the heavens fair;
There is none hath a form so divine,
On the earth, in the air.”
With angel-like face,
Who like a queen did appear
In her gait, in her grace.”
All alone and unknown,
Who sometime loved me as her life,
And called me her own.”
And a new way doth take,
That sometime did love thee as her life,
And her joy did thee make?”
But now am old, as you see;
Love liketh not the fallen fruit,
Nor the withered tree.
And forgets promise past;
He is blind, he is deaf, when he list,
And in faith never fast.
And yet a trustless joy;
He is won with a word of despair,
And is lost with a toy.
Or the word abused,
Under which many childish desires
And conceits are excused.
In the mind ever burning;
Never sick, never dead, never cold,
From itself never turning.”