Transcribed from the 1913 Thomas J. Wise pamphlet by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org. Many thanks to Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library, UK, for kindly supplying the images from which this transcription was made.
AXEL THORDSON
AND FAIR VALBORG
a ballad
by
GEORGE BORROW
London:
printed for private circulation
1913
Copyright in the United States of America
by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. for Clement Shorter.
AXEL THORDSON AND FAIR VALBORG.
At the wide board at tables play,
With pleasure and with glee abounding
The ladies twain in fair array,
The game they play is most astounding.
How fly about the dies so small,
Such sudden turnings are they making;
And so does Fortune’s wheel withal,
We scarcely know the route ’tis taking.
Dame Julli grand, and Malfred Queen,
At tables were their time employing;
Not distant on the floor was seen
A child with pear and apple toying.
Upon the floor the child it walked,
It played with apples and with flowers;
Then in Sir Axel Thordson stalked,
Was bound for Rome’s imperial towers.