Joan o' the Wad from her own folk goes
With a garland woven of gipsy-rose; 
The palms of her hands and the palms of her feet 
Are dark with the stain of bitter-sweet. 
Here and there in her tresses brown 
Tosses a feather of thistle-down: 
About her waist for a girdle green 
She has threaded buds of the argentine. 

Between her breasts for a posy fair,
She has set a handful of maidenhair; 
About her neck for a torque of gold 
A chain of buttercups, fold on fold 
She has bound and wound; and she looks like spring — 
Joan o' the Wad gone wandering 
From the wild brown moor to the deep-walled town, 
Joan o' the Wad in her lime-green gown. 

The apple-bird on the apple-bough 
Whistles with no one to fret him now, 
With cry and chirrup more shrill and clear 
Than his own love-song in the spring o' the year. 
The laden bees going back to the hive 
Joan o' the Wad no more will drive: 
The peach grows red and the pear grows dun, 
With none to cover them up from the sun. 

She has left the cattle unmilked in chall; 
And the miners laugh as they go to bal. 
No more afraid of her pisky eyes 
Where life like the lightning comes and dies — 
And sorrow moves like a leaf, astir 
In a pool where the wind has drownéd her; 
And laughter leaps as the bubbles come 
On fishless ponds covered thick with scum. 

But lads at twilight are fain to hear 
A soft word said in their listening ear; 
And fain to see what they see no more — 
A green gown gleam by the stable-door. 
For towns are many and towns are full; 
But here in the country the water's cool, 
And honey's sweet and the hearts are deep. 
And the Pisky-loves are the loves to keep. 

Through rivers of veins on the nameless quest
The tide of my life goes hurriedly sweeping,
Till it reaches that curious wheel o' the breast,
The human heart, which is never at rest.
Faster, faster, it cries, and leaping,
Plunging, dashing, speeding away,
The wheel and the river work night and day.

I know not wherefore, I know not whither,
This strange tide rushes with such mad force:
It glides on hither, it slides on thither,
Over and over the selfsame course,
With never an outlet and never a source;
And it lashes itself to the heat of passion
And whirls the heart in a mill-wheel fashion.

I can hear in the hush of the still, still night,
The ceaseless sound of that mighty river;
I can hear it gushing, gurgling, rushing,
With a wild, delirious, strange delight,
And a conscious pride in its sense of might,
As it hurries and worries my heart forever.

And I wonder oft as I lie awake,
And list to the river that seethes and surges
Over the wheel that it chides and urges —
I wonder oft if that wheel will break
With the mighty pressure it bears, some day,
Or slowly and wearily wear away.

For little by little the heart is wearing,
Like the wheel of the mill, as the tide goes tearing
And plunging hurriedly through my breast,
In a network of veins on a nameless quest,
From and forth, unto unknown oceans,
Bringing its cargoes of fierce emotions,
With never a pause or an hour for rest.