Dorothy Parker Poems

There's little in taking or giving,
There's little in water or wine;
This living, this living, this living
Was never a project of mine.
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Love is sharper than stones or sticks;
Lone as the sea, and deeper blue;
Loud in the night as a clock that ticks;
Longer-lived than the Wandering Jew.
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The Lives and Times of John Keats,
Percy Bysshe Shelley, and
George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron
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This, no song of an ingénue,
This, no ballad of innocence;
This, the rhyme of a lady who
Followed ever her natural bents.
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Authors and actors and artists and such
Never know nothing, and never know much.
Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney
Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney.
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By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
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Were you to cross the world, my dear,
To work or love or fight,
I could be calm and wistful here,
And close my eyes at night.
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Daily I listen to wonder and woe,
Nightly I hearken to knave or to ace,
Telling me stories of lava and snow,
Delicate fables of ribbon and lace,
...