“Green were her eyes,--yellow were her eyes--
Her eyes were like withered sedge!”
--“This is holy Mass and the hour flies
And there is red in the church-yard hedge.
“Raise me aloft my taper’s flame,
Light me my candles three,
For I must call on the Baby’s name
Who is born to young Mary!”--
“O father, I see a blood-red streak
In the reeds where first I caught her--
And I hear a cry makes my heart weak--
And turns my bones to water.
“The marsh-bittern and lone curlew
That cry comes not from them--”
--“Bring me bread and wine my Lubberlu,
And hold my vestments’ hem!
“The candles burn--The oxen kneel.
Boy, bring me my holy book--
Born is the King of Israel!”
--“Oh father, my father, look!
“She is pressing her face ’gainst the window-pane,
Where the saints stare in a row
And her lips are red with the morning’s stain
And her cheeks are white like snow!”--
--“’Tis Christmas morn and the mass unsung
For the Baby of young Mary!”--
But the idiot-boy from his side had sprung.
At the window prone was he.
And the oxen knelt in their frozen shed
And the sheep in their hurdled pen;
But Lubberlu lay stark and dead,
He never will come again.
They sign his breast and they sign his brow
With the cross to which they pray--
But two lost souls are flying now
Over the reeds and over the snow,
Over the hills and away.