Home, home she came, both tired and lame,
With three times as many sheep.
In a month or more, they'll be as big as before,
And then she'll laugh in her sleep.

But what would you say, if one fine day,
When they've got their bushiest tails,
Their grown up game should be just the same,
And she have to follow their trails?

Never weep, Bo Peep, though you lose your sheep,
And do not know where to find them;
'Tis after the sun the mothers have run,
And there are their lambs behind them.

I confess again to having touched up a little, but it loses far
more in Diamond's sweet voice singing it than it gains by a rhyme
here and there.

Some of them were out of books Mr. Raymond had given him.
These he always knew, but about the others he could seldom tell.
Sometimes he would say, "I made that one." but generally he would say,
"I don't know; I found it somewhere;" or "I got it at the back of
the north wind."

One evening I found him sitting on the grassy slope under the house,
with his Dulcimer in his arms and his little brother rolling
on the grass beside them. He was chanting in his usual way,
more like the sound of a brook than anything else I can think of.
When I went up to them he ceased his chant.