The Easy One

                                             For Mill Ballads

O, I pity her, the easy one, who never looks beyond

The fair and smiling Present into darker By and By;

Who lives upon the cooing of an artful lover wooing

While a thoughtless path pursuing wherein gloom and sorrow lie.

Man is weak, weak, weak,

But his arguments are sleek,

He will hypnotize a woman if she doesn’t mind her eye;

             But he’d better take and slay her

             Than to ruin and betray her,

And leave her crushed and helpless on the road to hell to die.

I pity her, I pity her – she will not give an ear,

Nor listen to her elders who would save her from the bad;

She would rather take her chances at a season’s public dances,

Smiling ‘neath the hungry glances of a wine excited cad.

             Man is weak, weak, weak,

             But he’s got a lot of cheek,

Till he works a maiden’s ruin, then he whines and runs away;

             But he’d better take and slay her

             Than to ruin and betray her,

And leave her for the world to scorn until her dying day.

Dec. 30, ‘99