OH, lovely Mary Donnelly, it ’s you I love the
best! If fifty girls were round you I ’d hardly
see the rest.

Be what it may the time of day, the
place be where it will, Sweet looks of Mary
Donnelly, they bloom before me still.

Her eyes
like mountain water that ’s flowing on a rock,
How clear they are, how dark they are! and they
give me many a shock.

Red rowans warm in sunshine
and wetted with a show’r, Could ne’er express the
charming lip that has me in its pow’r. Her nose
is straight and handsome, her eyebrows lifted up,
Her chin is very neat and pert, and smooth like a
china cup, 

Her hair’s the brag of Ireland, so
weighty and so fine; It ’s rolling down upon her
neck, and gather’d in a twine.

The dance o’last
Whit-Monday night exceeded all before; No pretty
girl for miles about was missing from the floor;
But Mary kept the belt of love, and O but she was
gay!  She danced a jig, she sung a song, that
took my heart away.

When she stood up for
dancing, her steps were so complete, The music
nearly kill’d itself to listen to her feet;

The
fiddler moan’d his blindness, he heard her so much
prais’d, But bless’d himself he was n’t deaf when
once her voice she rais’d. 

And evermore I ’m

whistling or lilting what you sung,Your smile is
always in my heart, your name beside my tongue;

But you’ve as many sweethearts as you’d count on
both your hands, And for myself there ’s not a
thumb or little finger stands.

Oh, you ’re the
flower o’ womankind in country or in town;
The higher I exalt you, the lower I ’m cast down.

If some great lord should come this way, and see
your beauty bright, And you to be his lady, I ’d
own it was but right. O might we live together in
a lofty palace hall, Where joyful music rises,
and where scarlet curtains fall!  O might we
live together in a cottage mean and small,

With
sods of grass the only roof, and mud the only
wall! O lovely Mary Donnelly, your beauty’s my
distress: It ’s far too beauteous to be mine, but
I ’ll never wish it less.

The proudest place
would fit your face, and I am poor and low;
But blessings be about you, dear, wherever you may
go!