The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears.

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.

The Lord's bin hard on me, Sir,
He's stown my barn away.
O dowly, dowly was that neet
He stole lile Doad away!

'Twas Whissuntide we wedded,
Next Easter he was born,
Just as t' last star i' t' April sky
Had faded into t' morn.
Throstles were singin' canty,
For they'd their young i' t' nest;
But birds don't know a mother's love
That howds her barn to t' breast.

When wark was ower i' summer,
I nussed him on my knees;
An' Mike browt home at lowsin'-time
Wild rasps an' strawberries.
We used to sit on t' door-sill
I' t' leet o' t' harvist-moon,
While our lile Doad would clench his fists
An' suck his toes an' croon.

But when t' mell-sheaf was gotten,
An' back-end days set in,
Wi' frost at neet an' roke by day,
His face gate pinched an' thin.
We niver knew what ailed him,
He faded like a floor,
He faded same as skies 'll fade
When t' sun dips into t' moor.

Church bells on Kersmas mornin'
Rang out so merrily,
But cowd an' dreesome were our hearts:
We knew lile Doad must dee.
He lay so still in his creddle,
An' slowly he dwined away,
While I laid two pennies on his een
On Holy Innocents' Day.

The Lord's bin hard on me, Sir,
He's stown my barn away.
O, dowly, dowly was that neet
He stole lile Doad away!