Classic Poem

Gypsies

The gypsy-race my pity rarely move,
Yet their strong thirst of liberty I love:
Not Wilkes, our freedom's holy martyr, more,
Nor his firm phalanx of the common shore.
For this in Norwood's patrimonial groves
The tawny father with his offspring roves;
When summer suns lead slow the sultry day,
In mossy caves where welling waters play,
Fanned by each gale that cools the fervid sky,
With this in ragged luxury they lie.
Oft at the sun the dusky elfins strain
The sable eye, then, snugging, sleep again:
Oft, as the dews of cooler evening fall,
For their prophetic mother's mantle call.
Far other cares that wand'ring mother wait,
The mouth, and oft the minister, of fate!
From her to hear, in ev'ning's friendly shade,
Of future fortune, flies the village-maid,
Draws her long-hoarded copper from its hold;
And rusty halfpence purchase hopes of gold.
But ah! ye maids, beware the gypsy's lures!
She opens not the womb of time, but yours.
Oft has her hands the hapless Marian wrung,
Marian, whom Gay in sweetest strains has sung!
The parson's maid — sore cause had she to rue
The gypsy's tongue; the parson's daughter too.
Long had that anxious daughter sighed to know
What Vellum's sprucy clerk, the valley's beau,
Meant by those glances which at church he stole,
Her father nodding to the psalm's slow drawl;
Long had she sighed, at length a prophet came,
By many a sure prediction known to fame,
To Marian known, and all she told, for true:
She knew the future, for the past she knew.
Where, in the darkling shed, the moon's dim rays
Beamed on the ruins of a one-horse chaise,
Villaria sat, while faithful Marian brought
The wayward prophet of the woe she sought.
Twice did her hands, the income of the week,
On either side the crooked sixpence seek;
Twice were those hands withdrawn from either side,
To stop the titt'ring laugh, the blush to hide.
The wayward prophet made no long delay,
No novice she in fortune's devious way!
" Ere yet," she cried, " ten rolling months are o'er,
Must ye be mothers; maids, at least, no more.
With you shall soon, O lady fair, prevail
A gentle youth, the flower of this fair vale.
To Marian, once of Colin Clout the scorn,
Shall Bumkin come, and Bumkinets be born."
Smote to the heart, the maidens marvelled sore
That ten short months had such events in store;
But holding firm what village-maids believe,
" That strife with fate is milking in a sieve",
To prove their prophet true, though to their cost,
They justly thought no time was to be lost.
These foes to youth that seek, with dang'rous art,
To aid the native weakness of the heart,
These miscreants from thy harmless village drive,
As wasps felonious from the lab'ring hive.