Love Song
My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled--
Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
My own true love, he is all my world,--
And I wish I'd never met him.
My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.
My own dear love, he is all my dreams--
And I wish he were in Asia.
My love runs by like a day in June,
And he makes no friends of sorrows.
He'll tread his galloping rigadoon
In the pathway of the morrows.
He'll live his days where the sunbeams start,
Nor could storm or wind uproot him.
My own dear love, he is all my heart--
And I wish somebody'd shoot him.
Commentary
Guest poem submitted by Suresh Ramasubramanian, <suresh at hserus dot net>:
Not had a good Dorothy Parker in a while. So here’s one.
Bitterly ironic, incisively humorous - it all sounds cliched (and probably IS cliched). This is a devastating parody of a whole lot of romantic poetry, from Sir Walter Scott to Byron, Keats and Shelley.
— Suresh
Dorothy Parker on the Minstrels:
Poem #150, Resume
Poem #192, Comment
Poem #486, Epitaph for a Darling Lady
Poem #560, Chant for Dark Hours
Poem #638, Song of Perfect Propriety
Poem #697, A Well Worn Story
Poem #878, Frustration
Poem #1090, Unfortunate Coincidence
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From the Wondering Minstrels mailing list, 1999–2008.
Dale Rosenberg · 19 February 2004
There are two lines missing in the first stanza!
After “unfurled” it should say:
Oh, a girl, she’d not forget him.
My own true love, he is all my world, –
I knew she got the rhyme and meter right throughout so something was wrong. I just checked in The Portable Dorothy Parker
Dale Rosenberg