The Boys' Candidate

"Writ in between the lines of his life-deed         We trace the sacred service of a heart         Answering the Divine command, in every par"

"Crowd about me, little children -         Come and cluster 'round my knee     While I tell a little story         That happened once with me."

"O the night was dark and the night was late,         And the robbers came to rob him;      And they picked the locks of his palace-gate,"

"O her beautiful eyes! they are as blue as the dew         On the violet's bloom when the morning is new,         And the light of their love"

"Here morning in the ploughman's songs is met     Ere yet one footstep shows in all the sky,     And twilight in the east, a doubt as yet,     S"

"The Text is taken from Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. i. p. 71, 'given from two MS. copies, transmitted from Scotland.' Herd had a very similar bal"