Page:Traditional Tales of the English and Scottish Peasantry - 1887.djvu/286

282 in woody or naked magnificence; and indeed the grandeur of Nature is such, that the beautiful mansion is diminished in the contemplation.

An attempt was made to abate the occasional provincialism of the ballad, but the experiment threatened to ravel the entire web, and it was not persisted in.

sun had risen above the mist,

The boughs in dew were dreeping;

Seven foresters sat on Chatsworth bank,

And sung while roes were leaping.

"Alas!" sung one, "for Chatsworth oaks,

Their heads are bald and hoary,

They droop in fulness of honour and fame,

They have had their time of glory.

"No stately tree in old merry England

Can match their antique grandeur;

Tradition can tell of no time when they

Towered not in pride and splendour.

"How fair they stand amid their green land,

The sock or share ne'er pained them;

Not a bough or leaf have been shred from their strength,

Nor the woodman's axe profaned them."

"Green," sung another, "were they that hour

When Scotland's loveliest woman,

And saddest queen in the sweet twilight,

Aneath their boughs was roamin'.

"And ever the Derwent lilies her tears

In their silver tops were catching,

As she looked to the cold and faithless north,

Till her eyes waxed dim with watching."

"Be mute now," the third forester said,

"The dame who fledged mine arrow

With the cygnet's wing, has a whiter hand

Than the fairest maid on Yarrow."

Loud laughed the forester fourth, and sung,

"Say not thy maid's the fair one;

On the banks of Dove there dwells my love,

A beauteous and a rare one."

"Now cease your singing," the fifth one said,

"And choose of shafts the longest,

And seek the bucks on Chatsworth chase,

Where the lady-bracken's strongest.

"Let every bow be strung, and smite

The fattest and the fairest;

Lord Devonshire will taste our cheer,

Of England's lords the rarest."