measured_words

I found this in a random notebook - I'd completely forgotten I'd written it. Probably comes from too much forlk music and murder ballads. I'm not super happy with the second to last verse, which was incomplete in the journal. I'm overall pleased. Don't know for a title, though. Open to suggestion.

ETA: changed the verse I didn't like - original verse after poem.

One day as I a roving went
I came upon a body
Her hair was torn, her limbs were rent
Though once she had been bonny

O fearsome ghost, I knelt and cried
Come tell to me your story
You've never heard, the corpse replied
A tale so sad and sorry

I left my home, I left my land
My true love for to follow
His bones lie bleached 'neath desert sands
And all I've found is sorow

Another soldier took me in
He was not kind but cruel
He fed me naught be shame and sin
It was a meagre gruel

And though I sought escape in vain
My belly soon betrayed me
My efforts brought me only pain
He killed my unborn baby

I prayed for aid but no one came
I railed against my weakness
I swore revenge and cursed his name
I made my heart a fortress

I broke a glass and chose a shard
With which to do my killing
But though my loss had made me hard
The act was unfulfilling

With such a knife I stabbed him sore
But took worse than I gave
He laughed and left me on the moore
No prayer nor shroud nor grave

Now like my love I am forgot
Down in this lonesome valley
My life is gone, I'm left to rot
The worms around me rally

---------
(removed verse:)
I stabbed him first, he stabbed me worse
T'was I whose life was lost
Out on the gorse he left my corpse
No shroud but winter frost