You're a mean mistreating mama
and you don't mean me no good
You're a mean mistreating mama
and you don't mean me no good
And I don't blame you, baby:
I'd be the same way if I could

You say you're going to leave me
well you say you going away
Now you say you're going to leave me
and you say you going away
That's all right baby:
maybe you'll come back home some day

Now you're a mean mistreater
and you mistreats me all the time
Now you're a mean mistreater
and you mistreats me all the time
I tried to love you, baby:

Your love threw me down
in a land of wonder
it ambushed me like the scent
of a woman stepping into an elevator
it surprised me
in a coffee bar
sitting over a poem
I forgot the poem
It surprised me
reading the lines in my palm
I forgot my palm
It dropped on me like a blind deaf
wildfowl
its feathers became tangled with mine
its cries were twisted with mine
It surprised me
as I sat on my suitcase
waiting for the train of days
I forgot the days
I traveled with you
to the land of wonder

Young to the end through sympathy with youth,
Gray man of learning, — champion of truth!
Direct in rugged speech, alert in mind,
He felt his kinship with all humankind,
And never feared to trace development
Of high from low, — assured and full content
That man paid homage to the Mind above,
Uplifted by the " Royal Law of Love. "

The laws of nature that he loved to trace
Have worked, at last, to veil from us his face;
The dear old elms and ivy-covered walls
Will miss his presence, and the stately halls

Young men dancing, and the old
Sporting I with joy behold;
But an old man gay and free
Dancing most I love to see;
Age and youth alike he shares,
For his heart belies his hairs.

You wished for a love-letter, Doctor—but then,
I know you to be most conceited of men;
You'll think I'm in earnest, I vow now I ain't,
For I would not deign to love even a saint.

You must never believe what the fair ladies say:
Take their nay for a yes, and their yes for a nay.
Like doctors, the darlings are very deceiving,
And most that they say is not half worth believing.

But now for my letter. How shall I begin?
If I say, my dear Doctor, that will be a sin!
And a love-letter without dear, darling, or dove,

You loved the hay in the meadow,
Flowers at noon,
The high cloud's long shadow,
Honey of June,
The flaming woodways tangled
With Fall on the hill,
The towering night star-spangled
And winter-still.

And you loved firelit faces,
The hearth, the home, —
Your mind on golden traces,
London or Rome, —
On quaintly-colored spaces
Where heavens glow
With his quaint saints' embraces, —
Angelico.

In cloister and highway
(Gold of God's dust!)
And many an elfin byway
You put your trust, —
A crock and a table,

You know not how deep was the love your eyes did kindle
Within my soul, or how great was my suffering!
Bless my beloved! He wished to visit me, but could not
Come near me because of his tear-drowned eyes;
He feared the watchers, so he came to me quickly,
Taking all adornments off his neck, except his beauty:
I offered cups of wine to him: the wine was put to shame
By those honey-like lips, those pearly teeth!
His eyelids were at last vanquished by slumber,
Wine made him obedient to all my wishes;
I wanted to make my cheek his pillow, but he found

You close your book and put it down,
As one might drop a tiresome task;
And, with what tries to be a frown,
You turn and ask:

“How can you care one hour for me
Unless your love is all a sham?
‘Childish and cheap’—but can I be
More than I am?

“Your poet knows that love delights
Only its equals, near or far . . .
‘ We love the things we love ,’ he writes,
'For what they are.’ ”

You serious child, how can you place
Such utter credence in a song?
It is, I grant, a lovely phrase;
But it is wrong.

I.

You ask me, What's Love? —Why, that virtue-fed vapour,
 Which poets spread over our longings, like gauze,
May do for a swain who can feed upon paper;
 But flesh is my diet, and blood is the cause.

II.

A delicate tendre , spun into Platonic,
 Suits the feminine fop,—whom no beauties provoke;
But the blood of a Welchman is hot and laconic,
 And he loves as he fights, with a word and a stroke .

III.

Yet, I grant you, there is a sweet madness of passion,
 A raptur'd delirium of mental delight;

You are a sunrise,
If a star should rise instead of the sun.
You are a moonrise,
If a star should come, in the place of the moon.
You are the Spring,
If a face should bloom,
Instead of an apple-bough.
You are my love
If your heart is as kind
As your young eyes now.