Merry it is in the good greenwood,
When the mavis and merle are singing,
When the deer sweeps by, and the hounds are in cry,
And the hunter's horn is ringing.
"O Alice Brand, my native land 265
Is lost for love of you;
And we must hold by wood and wold,
As outlaws wont to do.
"O Alice, 'twas all for thy locks so bright,
And 'twas all for thine eyes so blue, 270
That on the night of our luckless flight,
Thy brother bold I slew.
"Now must I teach to hew the beech
The hand that held the glaive,
For leaves to spread our lowly bed, 275
And stakes to fence our cave.
"And for vest of pall, thy fingers small,
That wont on harp to stray,
A cloak must shear from the slaughtered deer,
To keep the cold away." 280
"O Richard! if my brother died,
'Twas but a fatal chance;
For darkling was the battle tried,
And fortune sped the lance.
"If pall and vair no more I wear, 285
Nor thou the crimson sheen,
As warm, we'll say, is the russet gray,
As gay the forest-green.
"And, Richard, if our lot be hard,
And lost thy native land, 290
Still Alice has her own Richard,
And he his Alice Brand."