Johnny, sweetheart, can you be true To all those famous vows you've made, Will you love me as I love you Until we both in earth are laid? Or shall the old wives nod and say His love was only for a day: The mood goes by, His fancies fly, And Mary's left to sigh. Mary, alas, you've hit the truth, And I with grief can but admit Hot-blooded haste controls my youth, My idle fancies veer and flit From flower to flower, from tree to tree, And when the moment catches me, Oh, love goes by Away I fly And leave my girl to sigh. Could you but now foretell the day, Johnny, when this sad thing must be, When light and gay you'll turn away And laugh and break the heart in me? For like a nut for true love's sake My empty heart shall crack and break, When fancies fly And love goes by And Mary's left to die. When the sun turns against the clock, When Avon waters upward flow, When eggs are laid by barn-door cock, When dusty hens do strut and crow, When up is down, when left is right, Oh, then I'll break the troth I plight, With careless eye Away I'll fly And Mary here shall die. THE VOICE OF BEAUTY DROWNED. Cry from the thicket my heart's bird! The other birds woke all around, Rising with toot and howl they stirred Their plumage, broke the trembling sound, They craned their necks, they fluttered wings, "While we are silent no one sings, And while we sing you hush your throat, Or tune your melody to our note." Cry from the thicket my heart's bird! The screams and hootings rose again: They gaped with raucous beaks, they whirred Their noisy plumage; small but plain The lonely hidden singer made A well of grief within the glade. "Whist, silly fool, be off," they shout, "Or we'll come pluck your feathers out." Cry from the thicket my heart's bird! Slight and small the lovely cry Came trickling down, but no one heard. Parrot and cuckoo, crow, magpie Jarred horrid notes and the jangling jay Ripped the fine threads of song away, For why should peeping chick aspire To challenge their loud woodland choir? Cried it so sweet that unseen bird? Lovelier could no music be, Clearer than water, soft as curd, Fresh as the blossomed cherry tree. How sang the others all around? Piercing and harsh, a maddening sound, With Pretty Poll, tuwit-tu-woo, Peewit, caw caw, cuckoo-cuckoo. THE GOD CALLED POETRY. Now I begin to know at last, These nights when I sit down to rhyme, The form and measure of that vast God we call Poetry, he who stoops And leaps me through his paper hoops A little higher every time.