IN LILAC TIME.

The bobolink sung to ’is mate, The doves wuz softly cooin’, I heard the clinkin’ of the gate, When Joe first come a-wooin’. I stood beside the lilock bush (The sun was slowly sinkin’); My cheeks wuz all to once a-blush, When I heard the gate-latch clinkin’. Fer Joe he wuz so good an’ kind (Tho’ such a bashful lover), No truer friend you’d ever find In all the wide world over. He sez, “Ez I wuz goin’ by, I seed yer hair so shiny, Yer eyes ez blue ez summer sky, Yer cheeks ez red’s a piny; “My heart my throat come thrummin’ in, The dusk it struck my fancy; I couldn’t help a-comin’ in An’ speakin’ to ye, Nancy.” An’ then ’e sez—’e sez—O me! My feelins gits unruly— He’d liked me all along, you see; I know he loved me truly. An’ I wuz but an orphan, too, A-workin’ fer my livin’, Without a kith er kin I knew, An’ jest myself to give ’im. An’ when iz voice sunk soft away— A kind o’ tremblin’ in it— The words I tried so hard to say Kep’ chokin’ fer a minute. The lilock blossoms wuz in blow, So sweet, with dewdrops beaded; I handed ’im a bunch, an’ Joe No other answer needed. The year it passed, the war wuz come, The soldiers fast enrollin’; I heard the beatin’ of the drum, I thought like church-bell tollin’. I stood beside the lilock bush, The shadows round me lyin’, An’ all the evenin’ in a hush, Except the wind a-sighin’; An’ down the lane the whip-’oor-will So sad an’ mournful callin’— Somehow it wuz so dreadful still, The tears would keep a-fallin’. An’ then he come—so brave an’ strong, An’ yet ’is lips a-quiv’rin’; I guesst ’is errant all along, An’ couldn’t help a-shiv’rin’. O friend, the year went round—went round— But this’ll tell you better; This withered lilock some one found, An’ sent me in a letter. Ah, well! there’s more than me that know How sad is war, an’ fearful, An’ since the good God plans it so, I must try to be cheerful; But when the lilocks air in bloom, An’ when the day’s a-dyin’, I creep off to my little room An’ have a fit of cryin’.