Dorothy Parker Week V

[pallas_athena]

Ballade At Thirty-Five

This, no song of an ingenue,
This, no ballad of innocence;
This, the rhyme of a lady who
Followed ever her natural bents.
This, a solo of sapience,
This, a chantey of sophistry,
This, the sum of experiments:
I loved them until they loved me.


Decked in garments of sable hue,
Daubed with ashes of myriad Lents,
Wearing shower bouquets of rue,
Walk I ever in penitence.
Oft I roam, as my heart repents,
Through God's acre of memory,
Marking stones, in my reverence,
"I loved them until they loved me."


Pictures pass me in long review
Marching columns of dead events.
I was tender and, often, true;
Ever a prey to coincidence.
Always knew I the consequence;
Always saw what the end would be.
We're as Nature has made us - hence
I loved them until they loved me.


L'envoi
Princes, never I'd give offence;
Won't you think of me tenderly?
Here's my strength and my weakness, gents:
I loved them until they loved me.

Comments

[larissa-00.livejournal.com]

I find myself thinking of Catullus, now I've read several of DP's poems; I think it's the mixture of sometimes wanting love - but sometimes just to go to a _really_ hedonistic party and hang the consequences, and the changes of mood between the flippant and the melancholy.

Decked in garments of sable hue,
Daubed with ashes of myriad Lents,
Wearing shower bouquets of rue,
Walk I ever in penitence.
Oft I roam, as my heart repents,
is just _the_ most perfect trad Goth lyric ever!