Classic Poem

VERSE

People that I sing to
Bring a breath of Spring to
Envy me my gay career.
No one in the city
Has much time for pity;
Nobody can be sincere.
Thousands cheer me and applaud me,
Everyone stares.
If they've wounded me and bored me,
Nobody cares;
Women at the tables,
Loosening their sables,
Look at me with cruel eyes.
Then a little something in me dies
And cries.

REFRAIN

Weary of it all,
This getting and spending,
This futile unending
Refrain,
It's driving me insane;
I'm so weary of it all.
Other voices call —
The cattle at twilight,
The birds in the sky light
Of dawn —
Yet here am I forlorn,
And so weary of it all.
I miss the wildwood
I wandered through in childhood
With a heart as light as air,
What would I give once again to be there
With my old, deaf mother!
Night begins to fall,
By memory tortured
I dream of an orchard
In Spring,
The songs I used to sing,
Now I have to swing,
I'm so weary of it all.

PATTER

Wake up in the morning
'Round about noon,
A little lunch on a tray,
Shopping without stopping till my senses swoon,
Or else some dreary matinee.
Home at five,
More dead than alive,
Another day nearly gone.
Cocktails to mix,
My face and hair to fix,
The weary round goes on.
Eight or nine,
I have to go and dine
With this or that rich man about town,
Caviar and grouse
In an overheated house,
God, how it gets me down!
Home I go defeated and depressed again,
Only time for just one hour of rest again.
Bright lights,
White lights,
Waiters leering,
Faces sneering,
Laughing, chaffing,
Shouting, cheering.
Weary of it all,
This giving and giving,
This life that I'm living in hell.
With broken dreams to sell,
Just an empty shell,
Weary, weary, weary of it all!