These are not dew-drops, these are tears, <br />And tears by Sally shed <br />For absent Robin, who she fears <br />With too much cause, is dead. <br /> <br />One morn he came not to her hand <br />As he was wont to come, <br />And, on her finger perched, to stand <br />Picking his breakfast-crumb. <br /> <br />Alarmed she called him, and perplext <br />She sought him, but in vain; <br />That day he came not, nor the next, <br />Nor ever came again. <br /> <br />She therefore raised him here a tomb, <br />Though where he fell, or how, <br />None knows, so secret was his doom, <br />Nor where he moulders now. <br /> <br />Had half a score of coxcombs died <br />In social Robin's stead, <br />Poor Sally's tears had soon been dried, <br />Or haply never shed. <br /> <br />But Bob was neither rudely bold <br />Nor spiritlessly tame, <br />Nor was, like theirs, his bosom cold, <br />But always in a flame.<br /><br />William Cowper<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/epitaph-on-a-free-but-tame-redbreast-a-favourite-of-miss-sally-hurdis/
