Page:Barnes (1879) Poems of rural life in the Dorset dialect (combined).djvu/399

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HAWTHORN DOWN.
383

“Then you don’t seem a-born an’ a-bred,”
 I spoke up, “at a place here about;”
An’ she answer’d wi’ cheäks up so red
 As a pi’ny but leäte a-come out,
“No, I liv’d wi’ my uncle that died
 Back in Eäpril, an’ now I’m a-come
Here to Ham, to my mother, to bide,—
 Aye, to her house to vind a new hwome,”

I’m asheämed that I wanted to know
 Any mwore of her childhood or life,
But then, why should so feäir a child grow
 Where noo father did bide wi’ his wife;
Then wi’ blushes of zunrisèn morn,
 She replied “that it midden be known,
“Oh! they zent me awaÿ to be born,—[1]
 Aye, they hid me when zome would be shown.”

Oh! it meäde me a’most teary-ey’d,
 An’ I vound I a’most could ha’ groan’d—
What! so winnèn, an’ still cast a-zide—
 What! so lovely, an’ not to be own’d;
Oh! a God-gift a-treated wi’ scorn,
 Oh! a child that a squier should own;
An’ to zend her awaÿ to be born!—
 Aye, to hide her where others be shown!

HAWTHORN DOWN.

All up the down’s cool brow
 I work’d in noontide’s gleäre,
On where the slow-wheel’d plow

 ’D a-wore the grass half bare.
  1. Words once spoken to the writer.