LITMIR.BIZ

      Did you hear of the curate who mounted his mare?

      And merrily trotted along to the fair?

      Of creature more tractable none ever heard;

      In the height of her speed she would stop at a word;

      But again, with a word, when the curate said “Hey!”

      She put forth her mettle and galloped away.

      As near to the gates of the city he rode,

      While the sun of September all brilliantly glowed,

      The good man discovered, with eyes of desire,

      A mulberry tree in a hedge of wild-brier;

      On boughs long and lofty, in many a green shoot,

      Hung, large, black, and glossy, the beautiful fruit.

      The curate was hungry and thirsty to boot;

      He shrunk from the thorns, though he longed for the fruit;

      With a word he arrested his courser’s keen speed,

      And he stood up erect on the back of his steed;

      On the saddle he stood while the creature stood still,

      And he gathered the fruit till he took his good fill.

      “Sure never,” he thought, “was a creature so rare,

      So docile, so true, as my excellent mare:

      Lo, here now I stand,” and he gazed all around,

      “As safe and as steady as if on the ground;

      Yet how had it been if some traveller this way

      Had, dreaming no mischief, but chanced to cry ‘Hey’?”

      He stood with his head in the mulberry tree,

      And he spoke out aloud in his fond reverie;

      At the sound of the word the good mare made a push,

      And the curate went down in the wild-brier bush.

      He remembered too late, on his thorny green bed,

      Much that well may be thought cannot wisely be said.

      Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea!

      Jehovah has triumphed, – His people are free!

      Sing, – for the pride of the tyrant is broken,

      His chariots, his horsemen, all splendid and brave, —

      How vain was their boasting! the Lord hath but spoken,

      And chariots and horsemen are sunk in the wave.

      Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea!

      Jehovah has triumphed, – His people are free!

      Praise to the Conqueror, praise to the Lord!

      His word was our arrow, His breath was our sword.

      Who shall return to tell Egypt the story

      Of those she sent forth in the hour of her pride?

      For the Lord has looked out from His pillar of glory,

      And all her brave thousands are dashed in the tide.

      Sound the loud timbrel o’er Egypt’s dark sea!

      Jehovah has triumphed, – His people are free!

      There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet,

      As that vale, in whose bosom the bright waters meet;

      Oh! the last rays of feeling and life must depart,

      Ere the bloom of that valley shall fade from my heart.

      Yet it was not that Nature had shed o’er the scene

      Her purest of crystals and brightest of green;

      ’Twas not her soft magic of streamlet or rill,

      Oh! no – it was something more exquisite still.

      ’Twas that friends, the beloved of my bosom, were near,

      Who made every dear scene of enchantment more dear,

      And who felt how the best charms of Nature improve,

      When we see them reflected from looks that we love.

      Sweet vale of Avoca! how calm could I rest

      In thy bosom of shade, with the friends I love best,

      Where the storms that we feel in this cold world should cease,

      And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace.

      But truth shall conquer at the last,

      For round and round we run,

      And ever the right comes uppermost

      And ever is justice done.