The color of my true love's cheek
Will turn to gray within a week.
The skipper read it and exploded. "What kind of nonsense is this?"
"Of course it wouldn't rhyme in a literal translation," Ernest said mildly. "But that's the sense of it."
"Doggerel!" the skipper exclaimed. "Is this the message of the ages? Is this the secret of the lost civilization?"
"There are others, too," Ernest said. He was the psychologist-linguist of the crew. "You've got to expect them to be obscure at first. They didn't purposely leave any message for us."
Ernest sorted through his scraps of paper and picked one out:
They warn me once, they warn me twice.
Alas! my heedn't turns me spice.
"There seems to be something there," Ernest said.