Heine’s Last Song

Life’s a blonde of whom I’m tired (Being fair is just a knack Women learn to be desired By a Jew—who answers back).

Blonde, oh blonde, ye lost princesses With the shadow in your eyes As of bodiless caresses Known ere birth in Paradise.

Little ears of alabaster, Where like ocean in a shell Gentle murmurs drown the vaster Voice of rapture or of Hell.

Tender bodies—ah too tender To be given or be lent Unto love the money-lender Who demands his cent per cent.

Thus you took a man and tricked him, Life and ladies, to a will In your favour, but the victim Cheats you with a codicil.

All I had, you thought, was given— Life and ladies, you were wrong: In a poet’s secret heaven There is always one last song.

Even he is half afraid of, Even he but hears in part, For the stuff that it is made of, Ladies, is the poet’s heart.

Not for you, oh blonde princesses Is that final tune, but I Sing it drowning in the tresses Of a darker Lorelei.

For her hair than yours is stranger; Wilder lights are lost in hers Where the heart’s immortal danger, That you cannot know of, stirs.

Life and ladies, it is over: Blonde asks all, gives nothing back; You must find another lover, For the poet chooses black.

Where death’s raven marriage blossom Falls in clouds about her breast, On his dark beloved’s bosom Heinrick Heine is at rest.