He came upon them with black-knitted brows And clenched brown hands, and muttered huskily: "Oh, little May, are those your true love's vows You swore to keep while I was over-sea?" Then crying, turned upon the other one, "Com on, com on."
Then they fell to with faces set for fight, And hit each other hard with rustic pride; But Sam, whose arm with iron force could smite, Knocked his cowed rival down, and won his bride. May wept and smiled, swayed like a wild red rose As the wind blows.
She married Sam, who loved her with a wild Strong love he could not put to words--too deep For her to gauge; but with her first-born child May dropped off, flower-like, into the long sleep, And left him nothing but the memory of His little love.
Since then the silent teamster lives alone, The trusted headman of his master Steer; One only passion seems he still to own-- The passion for the foals he has to rear; And still the prettiest, full of life and play, Is little May.
Clear shining after the rain, The sun bursts the clouds asunder, And the hollow-rumbling thunder Groans like a loaded wain As, deep in the Grampians yonder, He grumbles now and again.
Whenever the breezes shiver The leaves where the rain-drops quiver, Each bough and bush and brier Breaks into living fire, Till every tree is bright With blossom bursts of light.
From golden roof and spout Brown waters gurgle and splutter, And rush down the flooded gutter Where the village children shout, As barefoot they splash in and out The water with tireless patter.
The bald little Highland street Is all alive and a-glitter; The air blows keen and sweet From the field where the swallows twitter; Old wives on the doorsteps meet, At the corner the young maids titter.
And the reapers hasten again, Ere quite the daylight wane To shake out the barley sheaves; While through the twinkling leaves The harvest moon upheaves Clear shining after the rain.
Lo, where left 'mid the sheaves, cut down by the iron-fanged reaper, Eating its way as it clangs fast through the wavering wheat, Lies the nest of a lark, whose little brown eggs could not keep her As she, affrighted and scared, fled from the harvester's feet.
Ah, what a heartful of song that now will never awaken, Closely packed in the shell, awaited love's fostering, That should have quickened to life what, now a-cold and forsaken, Never, enamoured of light, will meet the dawn on the wing.