Then up she springs, as if on wings; She thinks no more of deadly sin; The last of all her thoughts would be O Reader! now that I might tell Perhaps, and no unlikely thought! Perhaps he's turned himself about, And still and mute, in wonder lost, And now, perhaps, he's hunting sheep, A fierce and dreadful hunter he; In five months' time, should he be seen, Perhaps, with head and heels on fire, And like the very soul of evil, He's galloping away, away, And so he'll gallop on for aye, The bane of all that dread the devil! I to the Muses have been bound These fourteen years, by strong indentures: O gentle Muses! let me tell But half of what to him befel, He surely met with strange adventures. O gentle Muses! is this kind? Who's yon, that, near the waterfall, Which thunders down with headlong force, Beneath the Moon, yet shining fair, As careless as if nothing were, Sits upright on a feeding Horse? Unto his Horse, that's feeding free, 'Tis Johnny! Johnny! as I live. And that's the very Pony too! The roaring waterfall she hears, And cannot find her Idiot Boy. Your Pony's worth his weight in gold: And now all full in view she sees And Betty sees the Pony too: Why stand you thús, good Betty Foy? It is no goblin, 'tis no ghost, "Tis he whom you so long have lost, He whom you love, your Idiot Boy. She looks again her arms are up— And Johnny burrs, and laughs aloud, I cannot tell; but while he laughs, To hear again her Idiot Boy. And now she's at the Pony's tail, She kisses o'er and o'er again Him whom she loves, her Idiot Boy; She's happy here, she's happy there, Her limbs are all alive with joy. She pats the Pony, where or when But he is milder far than she, "Oh! Johnny, never mind the Doctor; By this the stars were almost gone, Though yet their tongues were still. |