In the smoke-blue cabaret She sang some comic thing: I heeded not at all Till "Sing!" she cried, "Sing!" So I sang in tune with her The only song I know: "The doors shall be shut in the streets, And the daughters of music brought low." Her eyes and working lips Gleamed through the cruddled air -- I tried to sing with her Her song of devil-may-care. But in the shouted chorus My lips would not be stilled: "The rivers run into the sea, Yet the sea is not filled." Then one came to my table Who said, with a laughing glance, "If that is the way you sing, Why don't you learn to dance?" But I said: "With this one song My heart and lips are cumbered -- 'The crooked cannot be made straight, Nor that which is wanting, numbered.' "This song must I sing, Whatever else I covet -- Hear the end of my song, Hear the beginning of it: 'More bitter than death the woman (Beside me still she stands) Whose heart is snares and nets, And whose hands are bands.'" | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...SANTORIN (A LEGEND OF THE AEGEAN) by JAMES ELROY FLECKER LOOKING FORWARD by ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON IMAGES: 1 by RICHARD ALDINGTON CURE FOR AFFLICTIONS by ARCHILOCHUS S. JOHN: THE DISCIPLE, WHOM JESUS LOVED by JOSEPH BEAUMONT TO REV. W. H. MILBURN by LEVI BISHOP UNTIMELY LOVE by MATHILDE BLIND |