Page:Early Reminiscences.djvu/33

When collecting Devonshire folk airs, I wrote some verses on Welland, to a somewhat grim traditional tune:

"On Broadbury Down the ravens croak,
   The breezes shriek and groan;
 Now low, now high, the white owls fly,
   As snow-flakes in the moon.
 The cotton-grass grows under me,
   In tufts of silver white.
 I swing and sway throughout the day,
   I sway and swing all night.

 On Broadbury Down my gibbet stands,
   Just where the highways cross.
 It tells the moments, marks the hours,
   With shadow on the moss.
 And I am as a pendulum,
   That swing and never stay,
 The Death clock of a bad old world,
   That cankereth away."

As a relief to this dismal subject I will give a letter written by my mother to one of her sisters, and to that I prefix a saying by Mme de Sévigny: "C'est une belle chose qu'une vieille lettre."

"August 28, 1832. We have had a great deal of rain since we came here, but still everything seems to me to wear a brighter and more cheerful aspect than it did on a former occasion, for though on both I have had a dearly loved companion with me, yet before, there were many anxious thoughts from which I am now quite free, and the sort of cloudiness through which I saw every object around me then, is cleared away, and the weather seems pleasanter, the sky brighter, and everything more comfortable. By the by, yesterday we retraced our steps through the wood and over the hill where you and Emily mischievously ran away from us, and where Edward will persist I plighted him my first troth (though he knows he is romancing when he says so), and you cannot think how much more I enjoyed it than before. Take an experienced person's word for it (such an one as myself) and believe me that there is no pleasure in 'a-courting,' 'keeping company,' 'love-making,' or whatever else you may please to term the few months before marriage, at all comparable to the