Page:Ballads, Stevenson, 1890.djvu/88

 Summer came in the country,

Red was the heather bell;

But the manner of the brewing

Was none alive to tell.

In graves that were like children's

On many a mountain head,

The Brewsters of the Heather

Lay numbered with the dead.

The king in the red moorland

Rode on a summer's day;

And the bees hummed, and the curlews

Cried beside the way.

The king rode, and was angry,

Black was his brow and pale,

To rule in a land of heather

And lack the Heather Ale.

It fortuned that his vassals,

Riding free on the heath,

Came on a stone that was fallen

And vermin hid beneath.

Rudely plucked from their hiding,

Never a word they spoke:

A son and his aged father—

Last of the dwarfish folk.

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