No More Learning

Then up along the town she hies,
No wonder if her senses fail;
This piteous news so much it shocked her,
She quite forgot to send the Doctor, 275
To comfort poor old Susan Gale.

And now she's high upon the down,
And she can see a mile of road:
"O cruel! I'm almost threescore;
Such night as this was ne'er before, 280
There's not a single soul abroad. "

She listens, but she cannot hear
The foot of horse, the voice of man;
The streams with softest sound are flowing,
The grass you almost hear it growing, 285
You hear it now, if e'er you can.

The owlets through the long blue night
Are shouting to each other still:
Fond lovers! yet not quite hob nob,
They lengthen out the tremulous sob, 290
That echoes far from hill to hill.

Poor Betty now has lost all hope,
Her thoughts are bent on deadly sin,
A green-grown pond she just has past,
And from the brink she hurries fast, 295
Lest she should drown herself therein.

And now she sits her down and weeps;
Such tears she never shed before;
"Oh dear, dear Pony! my sweet joy!
Oh carry back my Idiot Boy! 300
And we will ne'er o'erload thee more. "

A thought is come into her head:
The Pony he is mild and good,
And we have always used him well;
Perhaps he's gone along the dell, 305
And carried Johnny to the wood.

Then up she springs as if on wings;
She thinks no more of deadly sin;
If Betty fifty ponds should see,
The last of all her thoughts would be 310
To drown herself therein.

O Reader! now that I might tell
What Johnny and his Horse are doing!
What they've been doing all this time,
Oh could I put it into rhyme, 315
A most delightful tale pursuing!

Perhaps, and no unlikely thought!
He with his Pony now doth roam
The cliffs and peaks so high that are,
To lay his hands upon a star, 320
And in his pocket bring it home.

Perhaps he's turned himself about,
His face unto his horse's tail,
And, still and mute, in wonder lost,
All silent as a horseman-ghost, 325
He travels slowly down the vale. [24]

And now, perhaps, is hunting [25] sheep,
A fierce and dreadful hunter he;
Yon valley, now so trim [26] and green,
In five months' time, should he be seen, 330
A desert wilderness will be!

Perhaps, with head and heels on fire,
And like the very soul of evil,
He's galloping away, away,
And so will gallop [27] on for aye, 335
The bane of all that dread the devil!

I to the Muses have been bound
These fourteen years, by strong indentures: [A]
O gentle Muses! let me tell
But half of what to him befel; 340
He surely met [28] with strange adventures.

O gentle Muses! is this kind?
Why will ye thus my suit repel?
Why of your further aid bereave me?
And can ye thus unfriended [29] leave me; 345
Ye Muses! whom I love so well?

Who's yon, that, near the waterfall,
Which thunders down with headlong force
Beneath the moon, yet shining fair,
As careless as if nothing were, 350
Sits upright on a feeding horse?

Unto his horse--there feeding [30] free,
He seems, I think, the rein to give;
Of moon or stars he takes no heed;
Of such we in romances read: 355
--'Tis Johnny!