As I lie at your feet
And at Death’s deceit.”
Most of the poems collected are short ones, of a kind not dissimilar from the specimens given above. There are, however, some pieces which approach more nearly to the ballad form, which are considerably longer, and contain some sort of story. Our specimens would not be representative unless we included one poem of this kind. Let this ballad stand upon its own merits, merely as a representative one, without attempting to explain or apologize for its obscurities and want of harmony. The inequality of the metre here will represent the, to our ears, irregularity of the original:—
Over the mountain, bathed in the dew,
Is standing a little cottage new,
With windows that face the rising sun,
And door that leads toward the valley down.
In it was held a meeting gay
Of all the girls of the village one day.
And they sang and they spun,