This I say, and this I know:
  Love has seen the last of me.
Love's a trodden lane to woe,
  Love's a path to misery.

This I know, and knew before,
  This I tell you, of my years:
Hide your heart, and lock your door.
  Hell's afloat in lovers' tears.

Give your heart, and toss and moan;
  What a pretty fool you look!
I am sage, who sit alone;
  Here's my wool, and here's my book.

Look! A lad's a-waiting there,
  Tall he is and bold, and gay.
What the devil do I care
  What I know, and what I say?

I think that I shall never know
Why I am thus, and I am so.
Around me, other girls inspire
In men the rush and roar of fire,
The sweet transparency of glass,
The tenderness of April grass,
The durability of granite;
But me--I don't know how to plan it.
The lads I've met in Cupid's deadlock
Were--shall we say?--born out of wedlock.
They broke my heart, they stilled my song,
And said they had to run along,
Explaining, so to sop my tears,
First came their parents or careers.
But ever does experience
Deny me wisdom, calm, and sense!
Though she's a fool who seeks to capture
The twenty-first fine, careless rapture,
I must go on, till ends my rope,
Who from my birth was cursed with hope.
A heart in half is chaste, archaic;
But mine resembles a mosaic-
The thing's become ridiculous!
Why am I so? Why am I thus?

Woman wants monogamy;
Man delights in novelty.
Love is woman's moon and sun;
Man has other forms of fun.
Woman lives but in her lord;
Count to ten, and man is bored.
With this the gist and sum of it,
What earthly good can come of it?

Why is it, when I am in Rome,
I'd give an eye to be at home,
But when on native earth I be,
My soul is sick for Italy?

And why with you, my love, my lord,
Am I spectacularly bored,
Yet do you up and leave me--then
I scream to have you back again?

If I should labor through daylight and dark,
   Consecrate, valorous, serious, true,
Then on the world I may blazon my mark;
   And what if I don't, and what if I do?

And now I have another lad!
No longer need you tell
How all my nights are slow and sad
For loving you too well.

His ways are not your wicked ways,
He's not the like of you.
He treads his path of reckoned days,
A sober man, and true.

They'll never see him in the town,
Another on his knee.
He'd cut his laden orchards down,
If that would pleasure me.

He'd give his blood to paint my lips
If I should wish them red.
He prays to touch my finger-tips
Or stroke my prideful head.

He never weaves a glinting lie,
Or brags the hearts he'll keep.
I have forgotten how to sigh--
Remembered how to sleep.

He's none to kiss away my mind--
A slower way is his.
Oh, Lord! On reading this, I find
A silly lot he is.

You know the bloom, unearthly white,
That none has seen by morning light-
The tender moon, alone, may bare
Its beauty to the secret air.
Who'd venture past its dark retreat
Must kneel, for holy things and sweet,
That blossom, mystically blown,
No man may gather for his own
Nor touch it, lest it droop and fall....
Oh, I am not like that at all!