Cathie O'Sullivan put a tune to this lovely poem by John Shaw Neilson.

STONY TOWN
(J.S.Neilson/C.O’Sullivan)

If ever I go to Stony Town, I’ll go as to a fair
With bells and men and a dance-girl with a heat-wave in her hair
I’ll ask the birds that live on the road; for I dream (though it may not be)
That the eldest song was a forest thought and the singer was a tree

Oh, Stony Town is a hard town! It buys and sells and buys
It will not pity the plights of youth or any love in the eyes
No curve they follow in Stony Town, but the straight line and the square
And the girl shall dance them a royal dance, like a blue wren at his prayer

Oh, Stony Town is a hard town! It sells and buys and sells
Merry men three I will take with me, and seven and twenty bells
The bells will laugh and the men will laugh, and the girl shall shine so fair
With the scent of love and cinnamon dust shaken out of her hair

Her skirts shall be of the gossamer, full thirty inches high
And her lips shall move as the flowers move to see the winds go by
The men will laugh, and the bells will laugh, to find the world so young
And the girl shall go as a velvet bird, with a quick step on her tongue

She shall cry aloud that a million moons for a lover is not long
And her mouth shall be as the green honey in the honey-eater’s song
If ever I go to Stony Town, I’ll go as to a fair,
And the girl shall shake with the cinnamon and the heat-wave in her hair

Youtube clip

John Shaw Neilson

--Stewie.