Classic Poem

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." "