Arthur Quiller-Couch, comp. The Oxford Book of Victorian Verse. 1922.
Cashel of MunsterSir Samuel Ferguson (18101886)
I
And I’d 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!
Remember how I hunted about the valleys wide;
Time now has worn me; my locks are turn’d to gray;
The year is scarce and I am poor—but send me not, love, away!
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.
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, I’d take her with me kindly to the county Tyrone!
And O my girl, I see ’tis your people’s 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!