The dews are heavy on my brow; My breath comes hard and low; Yet, mother, dear, grant one request, Before your boy must go. Oh! lift me ere my spirit sinks, And ere my senses fail: Place me once more, O mother dear! Astride the old fence-rail. The old fence-rail, the old fence-rail! How oft these youthful legs, With Alice' and Ben Bolt's, were hung Across those wooden pegs. 'T was there the nauseating smoke Of my first pipe arose: O mother, dear! these agonies Are far less keen than those. I know where lies the hazel dell, Where simple Nellie sleeps; I know the cot of Nettie Moore, And where the willow weeps. I know the brookside and the mill: But all their pathos fails Beside the days when once I sat Astride the old fence-rails. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...APRIL, 1885 by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES EVENING CLOUDS by FRANCIS LEDWIDGE TO A CHILD OF QUALITY, FIVE YEARS OLD. THE AUTHOR THAN FORTY by MATTHEW PRIOR LYSISTRATA: HYMN OF PEACE; CHORUSES OF ATHENIANS AND SPARTANS by ARISTOPHANES TO A MAID OF THIRTEEN by CHRISTOPHER BANNISTER CHARACTERS: SUSANNAH BARBAULD MARISSAL by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD EASTERN TEMPEST by EDMUND CHARLES BLUNDEN |