Dorothy Parker

I always saw,
I always said  If I were grown and free,
I'd have a gown of reddest red  As fine as you could see,
To wear out walking, sleek and slow,  Upon a Summer day,

Lady, lady, never
Conversation toward your heart;
Keep your pretty words serene;
Never murmur what you mean

Her mind lives in a quiet room,
A narrow room, and tall,
With pretty lamps to quench the gloom And mottoes on the wall
There all the things are waxen neat And set in decorous lines;

Drink and dance and laugh and lie,  Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die
(But, alas, we never do
)

For this my mother wrapped me warm,
And called me home against the storm,
And coaxed my infant nights to quiet,
And gave me roughage in my diet,

Now it's over, and now it's done; Why does everything look the same
Just as bright, the unheeding sun, — Can't it see that the parting came
People hurry and work and swear, Laugh and grumble and die and wed, Ponder what they will eat and...

If I had a shiny gun,
I could have a world of
Speeding bullets through the
Of the folk who give me pains;

Sleep, pretty lady, the night is enfolding you;
Drift, and so lightly, on crystalline streams
Wrapped in its perfumes, the darkness is holding you;
Starlight bespangles the way of your dreams

Lilacs blossom just as
Now my heart is shattered
If I bowled it down the street,
Who's to say it mattered

My hand, a little raised, might press a star-Where I may look, the frosted peaks are spun,
So shaped before Olympus was begun,
Spanned each to each, now, by a silver bar
Thus to face Beauty have I traveled far,

Should they whisper false of you
Never trouble to deny;
Should the words they say be true,  Weep and storm and swear they lie

I never may turn the loop of a road Where sudden, ahead, the sea is Iying,
But my heart drags down with an ancient load- My heart, that a second before was flying
I never behold the quivering rain- And sweeter the rain than a lover to me...