Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Ireland: Vol. V. 1876–79.

Limerick

The Lapful of Nuts

By Sir Samuel Ferguson (1810–1886)

WHENE’ER I see soft hazel eyes

And nut-brown curls,

I think of those bright days I spent

Among the Limerick girls;

When up through Cratla woods I went,

Nutting with thee;

And we plucked the glossy clustering fruit

From many a bending tree.

Beneath the hazel boughs we sat,

Thou, love, and I,

And the gathered nuts lay in thy lap,

Beneath thy downcast eye;

But little we thought of the store we ’d won,

I, love, or thou;

For our hearts were full, and we dare not own

The love that ’s spoken now.

O, there ’s wars for willing hearts in Spain,

And high Germanie!

And I ’ll come back, erelong, again,

With knightly fame and fee:

And I ’ll come back, if I ever come back,

Faithful to thee,

That sat with thy white lap full of nuts

Beneath the hazel-tree.