Page:Barnes (1879) Poems of rural life in the Dorset dialect (combined).djvu/368

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352
POEMS OF RURAL LIFE.

There hills do screen the timber’s bough,
The trees do screen the leäze’s brow,
The timber-sheäded leäze do bear
A beäten path that we do wear.
The path do stripe the leäze’s zide,
 To willows at the river’s edge.
 Where hufflèn winds did sheäke the zedge,
An’ sparklèn weäves did glide.

An’ where the river, bend by bend,
Do dräin our meäd, an’ mark its end,
The hangèn leäze do teäke our cows,
An’ trees do sheäde em wi’ their boughs,
An’ I the quicker beät the road,
 To zee a-comèn into view,
 Still greener vrom the sky-line’s blue,
Wold Burnley our abode.

GRAMMER A-CRIPPLED.

“The zunny copse ha’ birds to zing,
 The leäze ha’ cows to low,
The elem trees ha’ rooks on wing,
 The meäds a brook to flow,
But I can walk noo mwore, to pass
 The drashel out abrode,
To wear a path in theäse year’s grass
 Or tread the wheelworn road,”
Cried Grammer, “then adieu,
  O runnèn brooks,
  An’ vleèn rooks,
I can’t come out to you.
If ’tis God’s will, why then ’tis well,
That I should bide ’ithin a wall.”