Classic Poem

(Old Bowery Museum)

If the girls you used to know
with their little hills of snow
never kept their golden eyes aglow for you,

And the ones you wished to wed
married other men instead
and to each and every other bed were true,

And if all the girls are gone
who have roamed the world alone
and the cold can only drive you home again,

Come and step in off the street,
no, don't stop to wipe your feet,
lay your stick aside and take this seat for men.

Here's hula hula girl
who can shimmy like a pearl
whose shape is one dark curl upon the beach.

Every movement of the sea,
sunny cloud and budding tree
have taught her all the things that she can teach.

Slip a penny down the slot,
press your best eye on the spot
and every blooming curve she's got will spin.

First a hip and then a thigh
and the thing you never spy
will fill your everlasting eye with sin.

Man alive, you're not so old,
half so timid or so cold —
where else have you ever spent so gold a cent?

What other hole can hold the half
reeling round that photograph —
go on, snicker, chuckle, laugh until you're bent.

Are the lamps in her eyes lit,
soon her mouth will part a bit,
it'll mean that you'll be it when she is through.

You're the boy she's dancing for,
you're the king upon the shore
and you'll brain the man who whispers whore to you.

She's the hope that's always haunted
you, the dope that's always daunted
you, the love, the life you've wanted till you're dead.

She's the earth you've never felt before,
the sky you've always knelt before,
the sun and moon that melt before they wed.

What the deuce has happened there now,
must you lift your head and stare now,
can it be you do not care for what I've said?

The light went out, the room turned dark? —
you poor old fool, she turned the spark —
a hint you ought to mark and go to bed.

Don't go back into the snow,
you're quite old enough to know
why it always happens so in life as well.

For no matter how you strive
not a girl on earth can give
all the life you'd love to live in heaven or hell.

Try the real ones till you rot
you will find as like as not
that the dream behind the slot is just as true.

And she only cost a cent
and she never need repent
what she's done or hasn't done she meant to do.