C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Lovely Mary Donnelly
By William Allingham (1824–1889)
From ‘Ballads and Songs’
O
If fifty girls were round you, I’d hardly see the rest.
Be what it may the time of day, the place be where it will,
Sweet looks of Mary Donnelly, they bloom before me still.
How clear they are, how dark they are! and they give me many a shock.
Red rowans warm in sunshine and wetted with a shower,
Could ne’er express the charming lip that has me in its power.
Her chin is very neat and pert, and smooth like a china cup;
Her hair’s the brag of Ireland, so weighty and so fine,
It’s rolling down upon her neck and gathered in a twine.
No pretty girl for miles about was missing from the floor;
But Mary kept the belt of love, and oh, but she was gay!
She danced a jig, she sung a song, that took my heart away.
The music nearly killed itself to listen to her feet;
The fiddler moaned his blindness, he heard her so much praised,
But blessed himself he wasn’t deaf, when once her voice she raised.
Your smile is always in my heart, your name beside my tongue;
But you’ve as many sweethearts as you’d count on both your hands,
And for myself there’s not a thumb or little finger stands.
The higher I exalt you, the lower I’m cast down.
If some great lord should come this way, and see your beauty bright,
And you to be his lady, I’d own it was but right.
Where joyful music rises, and where scarlet curtains fall!
Oh, might we live together in a cottage mean and small,
With sods of grass the only roof, and mud the only wall!
It’s far too beauteous to be mine, but I’ll never wish it less.
The proudest place would fit your face, and I am poor and low;
But blessings be about you, dear, wherever you may go!