Then up along the town she hies, This piteous news so much it shock'd her, To comfort poor old Susan Gale. And now she's high upon the down, She listens, but she cannot hear The streams with softest sound are flowing, The grass you almost hear it growing, You hear it now if e'er you can. The Owlets through the long blue night Fond lovers! yet not quite hob nob, That echoes far from hill to hill. Poor Betty now has lost all hope, And now she sits her down and weeps ; Such tears she never shed before; "Oh dear, dear Pony! my sweet joy! "Oh carry back my Idiot Boy! "And we will ne'er o'erload thee more." A thought is come into her head: "The Pony he is mild and good, "And we have always used him well; Perhaps he's gone along the dell, "And carried Johnny to the wood." Then up she springs as if on wings; The last of all her thoughts would be, O Reader! now that I might tell What Johnny and his Horse are doing! What they've been doing all this time, Oh could I put it into rhyme, A most delightful tale pursuing ! Perhaps, and no unlikely thought! Perhaps he's turned himself about, And still and mute, in wonder lost, He travels on along the vale. And now, perhaps, he's hunting sheep, Yon valley, that's so trim and green, Perhaps, with head and heels on fire, And like the very soul of evil, He's galloping away, away, And so he'll gallop on for aye, The bane of all that dread the devil. I to the Muses have been bound These fourteen years, by strong indentures : Oh gentle Muses! let me tell But half of what to him befel, He surely met with strange adventures. Oh gentle Muses! is this kind? |