Читать книгу An Irish Crazy-Quilt - Arthur M. Forrester - Страница 4

IN a vale in Tipperary, where the silvery Anner flows,

There’s a farm of but two acres where Pat Murphy ploughs and sows;

From rosy morn till ruddy eve he toils with sinews strong,

With hope alone for dinner, and for lunch an Irish song.

He’s a rood laid out for cabbage, and another rood for corn,

And another sweet half-acre pratie blossoms will adorn;

While down there in the meadow, fat and sleek and healthy, browse

Pat’s mine of wealth, his fortune sole—a pair of Kerry cows.

Ah, black were the disaster if poor Pat should ever lose

The cows whose milk and butter buy eleven young Murphys shoes,

Which keep their shirts upon their backs, the quilt upon the bed,

And help to thatch the dear old roof that shelters overhead.

And even then the blessings that they bring are scarcely spent,

For they help brave Murphy often in his troubles with the rent;

In bitterest hours their friendly low his spirits can arouse;

He don’t mind eleven young Murphys while he’s got that pair of cows.

And when the day is over, and the cows are in the byre,

Pat Murphy sits contented with his dhudeen by the fire;

His children swarm around him, and they hang about his chair—

The twins perched on his shoulders with their fingers in his hair,

Till Bridget, cosey woman, takes the youngest one to rest,

Lays four to sleep beneath the stairs, a couple in the chest;

And happy Phaudrig Murphy in his big heart utters vows

Ere that eleven should be ten he’d sell the pair of cows.

Then in the morning early, ere Pat, whistling, ventures out,

How they cluster all around him there with joyous laugh and shout!

A kiss for one, a kiss for all, ’tis quite a morning’s task,

And the twins demand an extra share, and must have what they ask.

What if a gloomy thought his spirit’s brightness should obscure,

As he feels age creeping on him with soft footsteps, slow but sure,

He’s hardly o’er the threshold when the shadow leaves his brow,

For his eldest girl and Bridget each is milking a fine cow.

Let us greet the name of cruel Buckshot Forster with a groan—

He hadn’t got the decency to leave those cows alone;

He thought maternal virtue only fitting for a sneer,

And made Pat Murphy’s little ones the subject of a jeer.

Well, the people have more feeling than the knaves who make their laws,

And when the people laugh ’tis for a somewhat better cause:

They hate the whining coward who beneath life’s burden bows,

But they honor men like Murphy, with his pair of Kerry cows.