Now we are old, hey, isn’t it fine,
Out in the wind and the rain?
Now we have nothing, why snivel and whine?
What would it bring us again?
When I was young I took you like wine,
Held you and kissed you and thought you divine—
Happy-Go-Lucky, the habit’s still mine,
Out in the wind and the rain.
Oh, my old Heart, what a life we have led,
Out in the wind and the rain!
How we have drunken and how we have fed!
Nothing to lose or to gain.
Cover the fire now; get we to bed.
Long is the journey and far has it led.
Come, let us sleep, lass, sleep like the dead,
Out in the wind and the rain.
The Bellman Madison Cawein
PATH FLOWER
A red-cap sang in Bishop’s wood,
A lark o’er Golder’s lane,
As I the April pathway trod
Bound west for Willesden.
At foot each tiny blade grew big
And taller stood to hear,
And every leaf on every twig
Was like a little ear.
As I too paused, and both ways tried
To catch the rippling rain,—
So still, a hare kept at my side
His tussock of disdain,—
Behind me close I heard a step,
A soft pit-pat surprise,
And looking round my eyes fell deep
Into sweet other eyes;
The eyes like wells, where sun lies too,
So clear and trustful brown,
Without a bubble warning you
That here’s a place to drown.
“How many miles?” Her broken shoes
Had told of more than one.
She answered like a dreaming Muse,
“I came from Islington.”