Muirneen of the Fair Hair

For a year my love lies down,
In a little western town,
And the sun upon the corn is not so sweet;
At the chill time of the year,
On the hills where roams my dear,
There is honey in the traces of her feet.

If my longing I could get,
I would take her in a net,
And would ease my aching sorrow for a while;
And though all men say me nay
I shall wed her on a day,
She my darling of the sweet and sunny smile.

I have finished with the plough,
And must sow my seedlands now,
I must labour in the face of wind and weather;
But in rain and frost and snow,
Always as I come and go,
I am thinking she and I should be together.

O love my heart finds fair!
It is little that you care
Though I perish in the blackness of my grief;
But may you never tread
God's Heaven overhead,
If you scorn me and refuse my love relief.

I would count them little worth,
All the women of the earth,
And myself alone to have the choice among them;
For in books I read it clear,
That the beauty of my dear,
It has wrestled with their beauties and has flung them.