Seventeen hundred and eighty! They say
Never was known so bitter a year.
The sea was frozen in the bay,
From Bonnet Point to Beaver Tail
The ice was so thick that never a sail
Sailed the passage for many a day.
A year to remember with dread and fear—
The snow a heavy blanket lay
And covered the woodlands brown and sear;
And the roads were lost, and the stone walls gone.
And still the snow kept sifting on,
And still the skies were gray and drear.

Then Dorothy rose from by the fire,
And put on her cloak, and her hood of red,
And, ere the drifts are any higher
I must try to find my sheep, she said.
No food have they had these three long days:
No fear for me, mother; I know all the ways;
In the blackest night I know no dread.

So she wrapped herself well, from head to toe,
And tied her hood round her winsome face,
And shut herself out in the cold and the snow.
And the fierce wind rushed to her embrace,
The snowflakes danced like elfin sprites
And fainter grew the window lights
As she took her way to the feeding place.

And the night came on, and the wind blew chill,
And the snow kept sifting down so white;
And no sweet Dorothy climbed the hill.
The news flew out upon the night,
And torches were carried by anxious men
Who searched the hillside again and again,
But no sweet Dorothy came in sight.

In spring a soft dimple runs down the hill,
Too deep for a gully, and scarce a ravine,
And in the bottom a small, sparkling rill,
Its course marked out by tenderest green:
And here, in the early springtime, they found her,
With the sheep that she sought still lying around her,
Among the sparrows that come here to preen.
Oh, come, birds of springtime, bluebird and swallow,
Come, little lambkins, follow, come follow,
To mourn and lament in Dorothy's Hollow!