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...SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: ADAM WEIRAUCH by EDGAR LEE MASTERS THE PLAINT OF THE CAMEL by CHARLES EDWARD CARRYL TO THE NIGHTINGALE by ANNE FINCH THE YANKEE PRIVATEER by ARTHUR HALE SIC SEMPER INSURANTIBUS by MORRIS GILBERT BISHOP DEMON by ALEXANDER (ALEKSANDR) ALEXANDROVICH BLOK THE GOLDEN ODES OF PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA: IBN KOLTHUM by WILFRID SCAWEN BLUNT |