THE pale moon is beaming,
The bright stars are gleaming.
Awake from thy dreaming,
Acushla, arise!
For sure the moon’s light, dear,
Though vivid an’ bright, dear,
Is but darkest night, dear,
Compared with your eyes.
Glimmerin’,
Shimmerin’,
Down in the river there,
Dancin’ and glancin’ and prancin’ away,
See how the pale moonbeams sparkle an’ quiver there,
Rise and eclipse them, sweet Peggy O’Shea!
See, your own thrue love
Is waitin’ for you, love,
So waken anew, love,
An’ gladden my sight!
Don’t keep me quakin’ here,
Freezin’ an’ achin’ here,
Trimblin’ an’ shakin’ here,
All the long night;
Quiverin’,
Shiverin’,
Faith it’s Decimber, dear,
Freezes me, teases me—darlin’ don’t stay;
Troth! this cowld night for a year I’ll remimber, dear,
For I’m all frost-bitten, Peggy O’Shea!
This morn had you been, love,
With me, you’d have seen, love,
A new dress of green, love,
I bought—for, you mind,
But last week you said, dear,
You hated the red, dear,
So get out of bed, dear,
An’ let down the blind!
Shyly,
Slyly,
Creep to the window now,
Sure, love, your love cannot say nay,
Whin you behold me, devout as a Hindoo now,
Bent at your shrine, darlin’ Peggy O’Shea!
Why have you waited
So long, whin you stated
To me that you hated
The red of our foes?
While you are keepin’
Me here with your sleepin’
The color is creepin’
All over my nose!
Face it,
Chase it,
Meet it with bravery,
Fearless, peerless, rush to the fray.
The hue on my nose ripresints Saxon slavery,
Up for the green, then, sweet Peggy O’Shea!
Och, you are there now,
So purty and fair now,
I raley declare, now
I’m murthered outright;
My mouth seems like butter,
I hardly can mutter
A sintince, or utter
A word, love, to-night.
Thumpin’
An’ bumpin’
An’ jumpin’ an’ flutterin’,
Knockin’ an’ rockin’, my heart seems astray,
And, as I can’t spake, why, I’ll have to be st-st-stutterin’
How much I love you, sweet Peggy O’Shea!
THE BOSTON CARRIER’S PLAINT.
THE summer sun, disgusted at some too-familiar cloud,
Had muffled up his brightness in a sort of misty shroud;
The sky o’ercast and leaden-hued, as if in angry pain,
Poured down upon our busy town huge tears of hissing rain.
Amid the crowds that hurried from the sloppy streets amain
Was one poor limping creature—the embodiment of pain.
His pale face, drawn and twisted in a multitude of ways,
Was really calculated quite to shock the public gaze;
His body was contorted; bent his back, and clenched each hand,
And his lips ejaculated words I could not understand;
Yet his phrases, I confess it, were not very transcendental,
For his adjectives, if forcible, were far from ornamental.
I questioned him—this blighted one—I asked him what the reason
Of his sorrow, and his anger, and his language out of season;
And in such a tone he answered, that a Tartar savage prowling
Around the near environs would have thought a wolf was howling:—