Lovers’ ills are all to buy: 
 The wan look, the hollow tone,
The hung head, the sunken eye,
 You can have them for your own.

Buy them, buy them:  eve and morn
 Lovers’ ills are all to sell. 
Then you can lie down forlorn;
 But the lover will be well.

VII

When smoke stood up from Ludlow,
 And mist blew off from Teme,
And blithe afield to ploughing
 Against the morning beam
 I strode beside my team,

The blackbird in the coppice
 Looked out to see me stride,
And hearkened as I whistled
 The tramping team beside,
 And fluted and replied: 

“Lie down, lie down, young yeoman;
 What use to rise and rise? 
Rise man a thousand mornings
 Yet down at last he lies,
 And then the man is wise.”

I heard the tune he sang me,
 And spied his yellow bill;
I picked a stone and aimed it
 And threw it with a will: 
 Then the bird was still.

Then my soul within me
 Took up the blackbird’s strain,
And still beside the horses
 Along the dewy lane
 It Sang the song again: 

“Lie down, lie down, young yeoman;
 The sun moves always west;
The road one treads to labour
 Will lead one home to rest,
 And that will be the best.”

VIII

“Farewell to barn and stack and tree,
 Farewell to Severn shore. 
Terence, look your last at me,
 For I come home no more.

“The sun burns on the half-mown hill,
 By now the blood is dried;
And Maurice amongst the hay lies still
 And my knife is in his side.”

“My mother thinks us long away;
 ’Tis time the field were mown. 
She had two sons at rising day,
 To-night she’ll be alone.”

“And here’s a bloody hand to shake,
 And oh, man, here’s good-bye;
We’ll sweat no more on scythe and rake,
 My bloody hands and I.”

“I wish you strength to bring you pride,
 And a love to keep you clean,
And I wish you luck, come Lammastide,
 At racing on the green.”

“Long for me the rick will wait,
 And long will wait the fold,
And long will stand the empty plate,
 And dinner will be cold.”

IX

On moonlit heath and lonesome bank
 The sheep beside me graze;
And yon the gallows used to clank
 Fast by the four cross ways.

A careless shepherd once would keep
 The flocks by moonlight there, [1]
And high amongst the glimmering sheep
 The dead man stood on air.

They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail: 
 The whistles blow forlorn,
And trains all night groan on the rail
 To men that die at morn.

There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail to-night,
 Or wakes, as may betide,
A better lad, if things went right,
 Than most that sleep outside.