I'm not, as I have said, unsympathetic:
I freely yield the tributary tear.
And even when the sorrow is mimetic
I lend an interested eye and ear.
I must, however, make one reservation:
The tributary tear-drop I withhold
When listening to a tenor's ululation;—
The sorrows of the tenor leave me cold.

I'm desolated by the woes of Mimi,
And Butterfly can always make me bawl;
My eyes when Violetta sings are streamy,
When Tosca weeps I have to leave the hall.
But Canio may break his heart vibrato,
Rodolfo all his miseries unfold,
And still, despite the 'cello sobbligato,
The sorrows of the tenor leave me cold.

Lucia or Juliet can get me going
(I always take an extra handkerchief);
The tenor person, though, with all his blowing,
Fails somehow to communicate his grief.
I listen to him dry-eyed as a cactus,
The while his heart-corroding tale is told.
I don't know why it should be, but the fact is
The sorrows of the tenor leave me cold.