The Death Of Robin Hood

"Give me my bow," said Robin Hood,
"An arrow give to me;
And where 't is shot mark thou that spot,
For there my grave shall be."

Then Little John did make no sign,
And not a word he spake;
But he smiled, altho' with mickle woe
His heart was like to break.

He raised his master in his arms,
And set him on his knee;
And Robin's eyes beheld the skies,
The shaws, the greenwood tree.

The brook was babbling as of old,
The birds sang full and clear,
And the wild-flowers gay like a carpet lay
In the path of the timid deer.

"O Little John," said Robin Hood,
"Meseemeth now to be
Standing with you so stanch and true
Under the greenwood tree.

"And all around I hear the sound
Of Sherwood long ago,
And my merry men come back again,--
You know, sweet friend, you know!

"Now mark this arrow; where it falls,
When I am dead dig deep,
And bury me there in the greenwood where
I would forever sleep."

He twanged his bow. Upon its course
The clothyard arrow sped,
And when it fell in yonder dell,
Brave Robin Hood was dead.

The sheriff sleeps in a marble vault,
The king in a shroud of gold;
And upon the air with a chanted pray'r
Mingles the mock of mould.

But the deer draw to the shady pool,
The birds sing blithe and free,
And the wild-flow'rs bloom o'er a hidden tomb
Under the greenwood tree.

Eugene Field

Eugene Field was an American writer, best known for his children's poetry and humorous essays. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he was known as the 'Poet of Childhood' due to his well-loved poems for children. After his mother's death in 1856, he was raised by a cousin in Amherst, Massachusetts. Field studied at several universities but never graduated. His most famous poems include 'Wynken, Blynken, and Nod' and 'The Duel.' Field worked as a journalist and editor in various cities, including Chicago, where he spent the last years of his life.

Eugene Field

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English

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Robin Hood's Death and Burial

When Robin Hood and Little John
Down a down, a down, a down,
Went o'er yon bank of broom,
Said Robin Hood to Little John,
"We have shot for many a pound:
Hey down, a down, a down.

"But I am not able to shoot one shot more,
My arrows will not flee;
But I have a cousin lives down below,
Please God, she will bleed me."

Now Robin is to fair Kirkley gone,
As fast as he can win;
But before he came there, as we do hear,
He was taken very ill.

And when that he came to fair Kirkley-hall,
He knocked all at the ring,
But none was so ready as his cousin herself
For to let bold Robin in.

"Will you please to sit down, cousin Robin," she said,
"And drink some beer with me?"
"No, I will neither eat nor drink,
Till I am blooded ...

George Wharton Edwards

Robin Hood's Flight

Robin Hood's mother, these twelve years now,
Has been gone from her earthly home;
And Robin has paid, he scarce knew how,
A sum for a noble tomb.

The church-yard lies on a woody hill,
But open to sun and air:
It seems as if the heaven still
Were looking and smiling there.

Often when Robin looked that way,
He looked through a sweet thin tear;
But he looked in a different manner, they say,
Towards the Abbey of Vere.

He cared not for its ill-got wealth,
He felt not for his pride;
He had youth, and strength, and health,
And enough for one beside.

But he thought of his gentle mother's cheek
How it sunk away,
And how she used to grow more weak
And weary every day;

And how, when trying a hymn, her voice
At evenin...

James Henry Leigh Hunt

Robin Hood's Death

The Text is modernised from the Percy Folio MS. (c. 1650). At two points, after 8.3 and 18.2, half a page of the MS., or about nine stanzas, is missing--torn out and 'used by maids to light the fire' in Humphry Pitt's house, where Percy discovered the volume (see Introduction, First Series, xxxix.). At the end another half-page is lacking, but Child thinks that it represents only a few verses. He also indicates a lacuna after st. 4, though none appears in the MS.


The Story of this version, mutilated as it is, agrees in its main incidents with that given at the end of the Gest (stt. 451-455). Another variant, Robin Hood's Death and Burial, extant in two or three eighteenth-century 'Garlands,' but none the less of good derivation, gives no assistance at either hiatus, and we are left with a couple of puzzles.<...

Frank Sidgwick

Robin Hood

To A Friend

No! those days are gone away,
And their hours are old and gray,
And their minutes buried all
Under the down-trodden pall
Of the leaves of many years:
Many times have winters shears,
Frozen North, and chilling East,
Sounded tempests to the feast
Of the forests whispering fleeces,
Since men knew nor rent nor leases.

No, the bugle sounds no more,
And the twanging bow no more;
Silent is the ivory shrill
Past the heath and up the hill;
There is no mid-forest laugh,
Where lone Echo gives the half
To some wight, amazd to hear
Jesting, deep in forest drear.

On the fairest time of June
You may go, with sun or moon,
Or the seven stars to light you,
Or the polar ray to right you;
But you never may...

John Keats

Robin Hood, An Outlaw.

Robin Hood is an outlaw bold
Under the greenwood tree;
Bird, nor stag, nor morning air
Is more at large than he.

They sent against him twenty men,
Who joined him laughing-eyed;
They sent against him thirty more,
And they remained beside.

All the stoutest of the train,
That grew in Gamelyn wood,
Whether they came with these or not,
Are now with Robin Hood.

And not a soul in Locksley town
Would speak him an ill word;
The friars raged; but no man's tongue,
Nor even feature stirred;

Except among a very few
Who dined in the Abbey halls;
And then with a sigh bold Robin knew
His true friends from his false.

There was Roger the monk, that used to make
All monkery his glee;
And Midge, on whom Robin had never t...

James Henry Leigh Hunt

Robin Hood and Allen-a-Dale

Come listen to me, you gallants so free,
All you that love mirth for to hear,
And I will tell you of a bold outlaw,
That lived in Nottinghamshire.

As Robin Hood in the forest stood
All under the greenwood tree,
There he was aware of a brave young man,
As fine as fine might be.

The youngster was clad in scarlet red,
In scarlet fine and gay
And he did frisk it over the plain,
And chaunted a roundelay.

As Robin Hood next morning stood
Amongst the leaves so gay,
There did he espy the same young man
Come drooping along the way.

The scarlet he wore the day before
It was clean cast away;
And at every step he fetched a sigh,
"Alas! and a well-a-day!"

Then stepped forth brave Little John,
And Midge, the miller's so...

George Wharton Edwards