L IFE'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 hears
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.