Black Sheep
‘Black Sheep, Black Sheep,
Have you any wool?’
‘That I have, my Master,
Three bags full.’
One is for the mother who prays for me at night—
A gift of broken promises to count by candle-light.
One is for the tried friend who raised me when I fell—
A gift of weakling’s tinsel oaths that strew the path to hell.
And one is for the true love—the heaviest of all—
That holds the pieces of a faith a careless hand let fall.
Black Sheep, Black Sheep,
Have you ought to say?
A word to each, my Master,
Ere I go my way.
A word unto my mother to bid her think o’ me
Only as a little lad playing at her knee.
A word unto my tried friend to bid him see again
Two laughing lads in Springtime a-racing down the glen.
A word unto my true love—a single word—to pray
If one day I cross her path to turn her eyes away.
