Songs of the West. S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould

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      1

      Beside the rolling ocean

       One morning in the month of June,

       The feathered warbling songsters

       Were sweetly changing note and tune.

       I overheard a damsel fair

       Complain in words of bitter woe,

       With tear on cheek, she thus did speak,

       O for the bonny Bunch of Roses, O!

      2

      Then up and spake her lover

       And grasped the maiden by the hand,

       Have patience, fairest, patience!

       A legion I will soon command.

       I'll raise ten thousand soldiers brave

       Thro' pain and peril I will go

       A branch will break, for thy sweet sake,

       A branch of the bonny Bunch of Roses, O!

      3

      Then sadly said his mother,

       As tough as truest heart of oak,

       That stem that bears the roses,

       And is not easy bent or broke

       Thy father he essayed it first

       And now in France his head lies low;

       For sharpest thorn, is ever borne

       O by the bonny Bunch of Roses, O!

      4

      He raised a mighty army

       And many nobles joined his throng

       With pipe and banner flying

       To pluck the rose, he march'd along:

       The stem he found was far too tough

       And piercing sharp, the thorn, I trow.

       No blossom he rent from the tree

       All of the bonny Bunch of Roses, O!

      5

      O mother, dearest mother!

       I lie upon my dying bed,

       And like my gallant father

       Must hide an uncrowned, humbled head.

       Let none henceforth essay to touch

       That rose so red, or full of woe,

       With bleeding hand he'll fly the Land

       The land of the bonny Bunch of Roses, O!