A Shropshire Lad Puns

>Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
>
>Is hung with bloom along the bough,
>
>And stands about the woodland ride
>
>Wearing white for Eastertide.
>
>Now, of my threescore years and ten,
>
>Twenty will not come again,
>
>And take from seventy springs a score,
>
>It only leaves me fifty more.
>
>And since to look at things in bloom
>
>Fifty springs are little room,
>
>About the woodlands I will go
>
>To see the cherry hung with snow.

“Now hollow fires burn out to black

And lights are guttering low:

Square your shoulders, lift your pack,

And leave your friends and go.

Oh never fear, man, nought’s to dread,

Look not left nor right:

In all the endless road you tread

There’s nothing but the night.”

This was at the beginning of a novel I just read called “Nothing but the Night” by one of my favorite authors John Williams.

On moonlit heath and lonesome bank

The sheep beside me graze;

And yon the gallows used to clank

Fast by the four cross ways.

.

A careless shepherd once would keep

The flocks by moonlight there,

And high amongst the glimmering sheep

The dead man stood on air.

.

They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail:

The whistles blow forlorn,

And trains all night groan on the rail

To men that die at morn.

.

There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail to-night,

Or wakes, as may betide,

A better lad, if things went right,

Than most that sleep outside.

.

And naked to the hangman's noose

The morning clocks will ring

A neck God made for other use

Than strangling in a string.

.

And sharp the link of life will snap,

And dead on air will stand

Heels that held up as straight a chap

As treads upon the land.

.

So here I'll watch the night and wait

To see the morning shine,

When he will hear the stroke of eight

And not the stroke of nine;

.

And wish my friend as sound a sleep

As lads' I did not know,

That shepherded the moonlit sheep

A hundred years ago.

..

n.b. hanging in chains was called keeping sheep by moonlight.

Now hollow fires burn out to black,

And lights are guttering low:

Square your shoulders, lift your pack,

And leave your friends and go.

.

Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,

Look not left nor right:

In all the endless road you tread

There's nothing but the night.