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, 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, 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! 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, 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 To drown herself therein. О 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, A most delightful tale pursuing! Perhaps, and no unlikely thought! He with his Pony now doth roam The cliffs and peaks so high that arc, To lay his hands upon a star, 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, He travels slowly down the vale. And now, perhaps, is hunting sheep, A fierce and dreadful hunter he; Yon valley, now so trim and green, In five months' time, should he be seen, 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 on for aye, The bane of all that dread the devil! I to the Muses have been bound These fourteen years, by strong indentures: О gentle Muses! let me tell But half of what to him befell; He surely met with strange adventures. О gentle Muses! is this kind? Why will ye thus my suit repel? Why of your further aid bereave me? And can ye thus unfriended leave me 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, Sits upright on a feeding horse? Unto his horse-there feeding free, He seems, I think, the rein to give; Of moon or stars he takes no heed; Of such we in romances read: — 'Tis Johnny! Johnny! as I live.
