May Asda is gone to the merry green wood;
Like flax was each tress on her temples that stood;
Her cheek like the rose-leaf that perfumes the air;
Her form, like the lily-stalk, graceful and fair:
She mourn'd for her lover, Sir Frovin the brave, For he had embark'd on the boisterous wave;
And, burning to gather the laurels of war, Had sail'd with King Humble to Orkney afar:
At feast and at revel, wherever she went, Her thoughts on his perils and dangers were bent;
No joy has the heart that loves fondly and dear -
No pleasure save when the lov'd object is near!
May Asda walk'd out in the bonny noon-tide, And roam'd where the beeches grew up in their pride;
She sat herself down on the green sloping hill, Where liv'd the Erl-people,and where they live still:
Then trembled the turf, as she sat in repose, And straight from the mountain three maidens arose;
And with them a loom, and upon it a woof, As white as the snow when it falls on the roof.
Of red shining gold was the fairy-loom made;
They sang and they danc'd, and their swift shuttles play'd;
Their song was of death, and their song was of life, It sounded like billows in tumult and strife.
They gave her the woof, with a sorrowful look, And vanish'd like bubbles that burst on the brook;
But deep in the mountain was heard a sweet strain, As the lady went home to her bower again.
The web was unfinish'd; she wove and she spun, Nor rested a moment, until it was done;
And there was enough, when the work was complete, To form for a dead man a shirt or a sheet.
The heroes return'd from the well-foughten field, And bore home Sir Frovin's corse, laid on a shield;
Sad sight for the maid! but she still was alert, And sew'd round the body the funeral shirt:
And when she had come to the very last stitch, Her feelings, so long suppress'd, rose to a pitch, The cold clammy sweat from her features outbroke;
Death struck her, and meekly she bow'd to the stroke.
She rests with her lover now deep in the grave, And o'er them the beeches their mossy boughs wave;
There sing the Erl-maidens their ditties aloud, And dance while the merry moon peeps from the cloud.
