As I Came from Walsingham. Child's English and Scottish Ballads. Walsingham. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. 1876-79. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes. England: Vols. I-IV

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Walsingham

As I Came from Walsingham

Child’s English and Scottish Ballads


“AS you came from the holy-land
Of Walsingham,
Met you not with my true-love
By the way as you came?”

“How should I know your true-love,	5
That have met many a one,
As I came from the holy-land,
That have come, that have gone?”

“She is neither white nor brown,
But as the heavens fair;	10
There is none hath a form so divine,
On the earth, in the air.”

“Such a one did I meet, good sir,
With angel-like face,
Who like a queen did appear	15
In her gait, in her grace.”

“She hath left me here all alone,
All alone and unknown,
Who sometime loved me as her life,
And called me her own.”	20

“What ’s the cause she hath left thee alone,
And a new way doth take,
That sometime did love thee as her life,
And her joy did thee make?”

“I loved her all my youth,	25
But now am old, as you see;
Love liketh not the fallen fruit,
Nor the withered tree.

“For Love is a careless child,
And forgets promise past;	30
He is blind, he is deaf, when he list,
And in faith never fast.

“For Love is a great delight,
And yet a trustless joy;
He is won with a word of despair,	35
And is lost with a toy.

“Such is the love of womankind,
Or the word abused,
Under which many childish desires
And conceits are excused.	40

“But love is a durable fire,
In the mind ever burning;
Never sick, never dead, never cold,
From itself never turning.”