in honoured love
The wife o' Robin-a-Ree."

Green be thy leaves, thou "tree of troth,"
And thy rowan berries red,
Where he has sworn that holy oath,
If he stand to what he has said.
But black and blasted may thou be,
And thy berries a yellow green,
If he prove false to Mary Lee,
Who so faithful to him has been.

For a woman's art and a woman's wile
A man may well often slight,
At the worst they are but nature's guile
To procure what is nature's right.
But a woman's wrath, when once inflamed
By a sense of fond love betrayed,
No cunning device by cunning framed
Has ever that passion laid.

II.

Passions will range and passions will change,
And they leave no mortal in peace,
There is nothing in man that to us seems strange
That to passion you may not trace.
The heart that will breathe the warmest love
Is the first oft to cease its glow,
The fairest flower in the forest grove
Is often the first to dow.

A woman's eye is aye quick to see
The love of a lover decay:
And why from the trusty trysting tree
Does Robin now stay away?
There are other trees in the wood as green,
With as smooth a sward below,
Where lovers may lie in the balmy e'en,
And their love to each other show.

'Twas when the moon in an autumn night
Threw shadows throughout the wood,
She heard some sounds; and with footsteps light,
Where no one could see, she stood.
She listened, and with an anxious ear,
To know who these there might be:
A youth was there with his mistress dear,
And the youth was Robin-a-Ree.

Silent and gloomy she wandered home,
And went to her bed apart,
No softening tear to her eye would come,
No sigh from her aching heart.
The balmy milk of a woman's breast
Waxed curdled green and sour,
And Mary Lee was by all confessed
As changed from that fatal hour.

At times, when the moon gave little light,
She sat by the Solway side,
And thought, as she sat, of that happy night
When he swore by the Solway tide.
Far sweeter to her the roaring wind,
Than when it was solemn and low,
For the waters he swore by seemed to her mind
As resenting that broken vow.

Still darker and darker the cloud on her brow,
Yet paler her tearless cheek;
But no one her sorrow would ever know,
Nor word would she ever speak.
'Tis the story old, old, so often told,
To be told while time shall be,
Fair Catherine, the heiress of Ravenswold,
Is the wife of Robin-a-Ree.

II