At Casterbridge Fair - Richard Burton

Sing Ballad singer raise a hearty tune

Make me forget that there was ever a one

I walked with in the meek light of the moon

When the day's work was done

Rhyme Ballad rhymer start a country song

Make me forget that she whom I loved well

Swore she would love me dearly love me long

Then what I cannot tell

Sing Ballad singer from your little book

Make me forget those heart breaks achings fears

Make me forget her name her sweet sweet look

Make me forget her tears

These market dames mid aged with lips thin drawn

And tissues sere

Are they the ones we loved in years agone

And courted here

Are these the muslined pink young things to whom

We vowed and swore

In nooks on summer Sundays by the Froom

Or Budmouth shore

Do they remember those gay tunes we trod

Clasped on the green

Aye trod till moonlight set on the beaten sod

A satin sheen

They must forget forget

They cannot know

What once they were

Or memory would transfigure them and show

Them always fair

Black on frowns east on Maidon

And westward to the sea

But on neither is his frown laden

With scorn as his frown on me

At dawn my heart grew heavy

I could not sip the wine

I left the jocund bevy

And that young man of mine

The roadside elms pass by me

Why do I sink with shame

When the birds a perch there eye me

They too have done the same

Nobody took any notice of her

As she stood on the causey kerb

All eager to sell her honey and apples

And bunches of garden herb

And if she had offered to give her wares

And herself with them too that day

I doubt if a soul would have cared to

Take a bargain so choice away

But chancing to trace her sunburnt grace

That morning as I passed nigh

I went and I said Poor maidy dear

And will none of the people buy

And so it began; and soon we knew

What the end of it all must be

And I found that though no others had bid

A prize had been won by me

And are ye one of Hermitage

Of Hermitage by Ivel Road

And do ye know in Hermitage

A thatch roofed house where sengreens grow

And does John Waywood live there still

He of the name that there abode

When father hurdled on the hill

Some fifteen years ago

Does he now speak of Patty Beech

The Patty Beech he used to see

Or ask at all if Patty Beech

Is known or heard of out this way

Ask ever if she's living yet

And where her present home may be

And how she bears life's fag and fret

After so long a day

In years agone at Hermitage

This faded face was counted fair

None fairer; and at Hermitage

We swore to wed when he should thrive

But never a chance had he or I

And waiting made his wish outwear

And Time that dooms man's love to die

Preserves a maid's alive

The singers are gone from the Cornmarket place

With their broadsheets of rhymes

The street rings no longer in treble and bass

With their skits on the times

And the Cross lately thronged is a dim naked space

That but echoes the stammering chimes

From Clock corner steps

As each quarter ding dongs

Away the folk roam

By the "Hart" and

Grey's Bridge into byways and drongs

Or across the ridged loam

The younger ones shrilling the lately heard songs

The old saying

Would we were home

The shy seeming maiden so mute in the fair

Now rattles and talks

And that one who looked the most swaggering there

Grows sad as she walks

And she who seemed eaten by cankering care

In statuesque sturdiness stalks

And midnight clears High Street of all but the ghosts

Of its buried burghees

From the latest far back to those old Roman hosts

Whose remains one yet sees

Who loved laughed and fought

Hailed their friends drank their toasts

At their meeting times here just as these