Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume II. Love. 1904. | | | | IV. Wooing and Winning | | Among the Heather | | William Allingham (1824–1889) |
| | | ONE evening walking out, I o’ertook a modest colleen, | |
| When the wind was blowing cool, and the harvest leaves were falling: | |
| “Is our way by chance the same? might we travel on together?” | |
| “Oh, I keep the mountain side,” she replied, “among the heather.” | |
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| “Your mountain air is sweet when the days are long and sunny, | 5 |
| When the grass grows round the rocks, and the whin-bloom smells like honey; | |
| But the winter ’s coming fast with its foggy, snowy weather, | |
| And you ’ll find it bleak and chill on your hill, among the heather.” | |
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| She praised her mountain home, and I ’ll praise it too, with reason, | |
| For where Molly is there ’s sunshine and flow’rs at every season. | 10 |
| Be the moorland black or white, does it signify a feather, | |
| Now I know the way by heart, every part, among the heather? | |
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| The sun goes down in haste, and the night falls thick and stormy; | |
| Yet I ’d travel twenty miles to the welcome that ’s before me; | |
| Singing hi! for Eskydun, in the teeth of wind and weather! | 15 |
| Love ’ll warm me as I go through the snow, among the heather. | | | | |
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