“Sir Peter, if what now I know
I had but known before,
The children I shall bear thee
They ne’er should have been poor.
“Within my father’s castle
A little girl I strayed,
When in the earth a treasure
Of ruddy gold they laid.
“Down by the strand ’tis buried,
Beneath a mighty stone.”
Thither to fetch the treasure
In haste Sir Peter’s gone.
He has broken up the flinty rock,
So deep a hole he’s made—
But none shall ever gold dig up
Where gold was never laid!
One shall never gold dig up
Where gold was never laid;
Never came together more
The knight and lovely maid.
THE STALWART MONK
Above the wood a cloister towers,
Gilt window it displays;
There lie before it Kempions twelve,
The cloister they will raze.
There lie before it Kempions twelve,
The cloister down will tear;
The oxen and the cows they slew
The monks should have for fare.
The monk he out of the window looked,
Then shook both beam and wall:
“And be the Kemps no more than twelve,
I’ll easily tame them all.”
The monk he called to his serving lad:
“My club go fetch me in,
For I will out to the forest straight
And make them cease their din.”