Read "The Broken Ring" by Eugene Field online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
To the willows of the brookside / The mill wheel sings to-day -- / Sings and weeps, / As the brooklet creeps / Wondering on its way; / And here is the ring _she_ gave me / With love's sweet promise then -- / It hath burst apart / Like the trusting heart / That may never be soothed again!
Oh, I would be a minstrel / To wander far and wide, / Weaving in song the merciless wrong / Done by a perjured bride! / Or I would be a soldier, / To seek in the bloody fray / What gifts of fate can compensate / For the pangs I suffer to-day!
Yet may this aching bosom, / By bitter sorrow crushed, / Be still and cold / In the churchyard mould / Ere _thy_ sweet voice be hushed; / So sing, sing on forever, / O wheel of the brookside mill, / For you mind me again / Of the old time when / I felt love's gracious thrill.