Somebody’s Song

1893 –

1967

     This is what I vow;
He shall have my heart to keep,
Sweetly will we stir and sleep,
     All the years, as now.
Swift the measured sands may run;
Love like this is never done;
He and I are welded one:
     This is what I vow.

     This is what I pray:
Keep him by me tenderly;
Keep him sweet in pride of me,
     Ever and a day;
Keep me from the old distress;
Let me, for our happiness,
Be the one to love the less:
     This is what I pray.

     This is what I know:
Lovers’ oaths are thin as rain;
Love's a harbinger of pain—
     Would it were not so!
Ever is my heart a-thirst,
Ever is my love accurst;
He is neither last nor first—
     This is what I know.

From Enough Rope (Boni & Liveright, 1926) by Dorothy Parker. This poem is in the public domain.

Incurable

And if my heart be scarred and burned,
The safer, I, for all I learned;
The calmer, I, to see it true
That ways of love are never new—
The love that sets you daft and dazed
Is every love that ever blazed;
The happier, I, to fathom this:
A kiss is every other kiss.

Dorothy Parker

1928

Day-Dreams

We’d build a little bungalow,
If you and I were one,
And carefully we’d plan it, so
We’d get the morning sun.
I’d rise each day at rosy dawn
And bustle gaily down;
In evening’s cool, you’d spray the lawn
When you came back from town.

Dorothy Parker

1926

Renunciation

Chloe’s hair, no doubt, was brighter;
Lydia’s mouth more sweetly sad;
Hebe’s arms were rather whiter;
Languorous-lidded Helen had
Eyes more blue than e’er the sky was;
Lalage’s was subtler stuff;
Still, you used to think that I was
Fair enough.

Dorothy Parker

1926

Poems

Somebody’s Song

More by this poet

Incurable

Day-Dreams

Renunciation

Poems

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Somebody’s Song

More by this poet

Incurable

Day-Dreams

Renunciation

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