The Merry Maid

"Cut if you will, with Sleep's dull knife,         Each day to half its length, my friend,--     The years that Time takes off my life,"

"Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:     Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!"

"Love, if I weep it will not matter,             And if you laugh I shall not care;         Foolish am I to think about it,             But"

"Still must the poet as of old,     In barren attic bleak and cold,     Starve, freeze, and fashion verses to     Such things as flowers and son"

"Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met     Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,     And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,     S"

"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"