The Owlets through the long blue night Fond lovers! yet not quite hob nob, That echoes far from hill to hill. Poor Betty now has lost all hope, And now she sits her down and weeps; Such tears she never shed before; "Oh dear, dear Pony! my sweet joy! Oh carry back my Idiot Boy! And we will ne'er o'erload thee more." A thought is come into her head: Then up she springs, as if on wings; The last of all her thoughts would be, To drown herself therein. O Reader! now that I might tell A most delightful tale pursuing! Perhaps, and no unlikely thought! Perhaps he's turned himself about, And still and mute, in wonder lost, He travels on along the vale. And now, perhaps, he's hunting sheep, Yon valley, that's so trim and green, 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? Why will ye thus my suit repel? your further aid bereave me? And can ye thus unfriendly leave me ; Ye Muses! whom I love so well. Who's yon, that, near the waterfall, Which thunders down with headlong force, As careless as if nothing were, Unto his Horse, that's feeding free, 'Tis Johnny! Johnny! as I live. And that's the very Pony too. |