We were very tired, we were very merry-- We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable-- But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon; And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon. We were very tired, we were very merry-- We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry; And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear, From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere; And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold, And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold. We were very tired, we were very merry, We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry. We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head, And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read; And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears, And we gave her all our money but our subway fares. _Thursday_ And if I loved you Wednesday, Well, what is that to you? I do not love you Thursday-- So much is true. And why you come complaining Is more than I can see. I loved you Wednesday,--yes--but what Is that to me? _To the Not Impossible Him_ How shall I know, unless I go To Cairo and Cathay, Whether or not this blessed spot Is blest in every way? Now it may be, the flower for me Is this beneath my nose; How shall I tell, unless I smell The Carthaginian rose? The fabric of my faithful love No power shall dim or ravel Whilst I stay here,--but oh, my dear, If I should ever travel! _The Singing-Woman from the Wood’s Edge_ What should I be but a prophet and a liar, Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar? Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water, What should I be but the fiend’s god-daughter? And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog, That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog? And what should be my singing, that was christened at an altar, But Aves and Credos and Psalms out of the Psalter? You will see such webs on the wet grass, maybe, As a pixie-mother weaves for her baby, You will find such flame at the wave’s weedy ebb As flashes in the meshes of a mer-mother’s web, But there comes to birth no common spawn From the love of a priest for a leprechaun, And you never have seen and you never will see Such things as the things that swaddled me! After all’s said and after all’s done, What should I be but a harlot and a nun? In through the bushes, on any foggy day, My dad would come a-swishing of the drops away, With a prayer for my death and a groan for my birth, A-mumbling of his beads for all that he was worth. And there’d sit my ma, with her knees beneath her chin, A-looking in his face and a-drinking of it in, And a-marking in the moss some funny little saying That would mean just the opposite of all that he was praying!