Love Is a Mortal Disease
My grief and my pain! a mortal disease is love,
Woe, woe unto him who must prove it a month or even a day,
It hath broken my heart, and my bosom is burdened with sighs,
From dreaming of her gentle sleep hath forsaken mine eyes.
I met with the fairy host at the liss beside Ballyfinnane;
I asked them had they a herb for the curing of love's cruel pain.
They answered me softly and mildly, with many a pitying tone,
"When this torment comes into the heart it never goes out again."
It seems to me long till the tide washes up on the strand;
It seems to me long till the night shall fade into day;
It seems to me long till the cocks crow on every hand;
And rather than the world were I close beside my love.
Do not marry the grey old man, but marry the young man, dear;
Marry the lad who loves you, my grief, though he live not out the year;
Youthful you are, and kind, but your mind is not yet come to sense,
And if you live longer, the lads will be following you.
My woe and my plight! where to-night is the snowdrift and frost?
Or even I and my love together breasting the waves of the sea;
Without bark, without boat, without any vessel with me,
But I to be swimming, and my arm to be circling her waist!