I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face

I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face
music by Frederick Loewe (seated)
Lyric by Alan J. Lerner (right)

Damn! Damn! Damn! Damn!
I've grown accustomed to her face.
She almost makes the day begin.
I've grown accustomed to the tune she whistles night and noon.
Her smiles, her frowns, her ups, her downs are second nature to me now;
Like breathing out and breathing in.
I was serenely independent and content before we met,
Surely I can always be that way again---and yet,
I've grown accustomed to her look; accustomed to her voice;
Accustomed to her face.

Marry Freddie.
What an infantile idea!
What a heartless, wicked, brainless thing to do!
But she'll regret, she'll regret it!
It's doomed before they even take the vow!

I can see her now, Mrs. Freddie Eynsford-Hill in a wretched little flat above a store.
I can see her now, not a penny in the till, and a bill collector beating at the door.
She'll try to teach the things I taught her, and end up selling flow'rs instead,
Begging for her bread and water, while her husband has his breakfast in bed!

In a year or so, when she's prematurely gray, and the blossom in her cheek has turned to chalk,
She'll come home, and lo, he'll have upped and run away with a social climbing heiress from New York!
Poor Eliza. How simply frightful!
How humiliating! How delightful!

How poignant it'll be on that inevitable night when she hammers on my door in tears and rags.
Miserable and lonely, repentant and contrite.
Will I take her in or hurl her to the wolves?
Give her kindness or the treatment she deserves?
Will I take her in or throw the baggage out?

But...I'm a most forgiving man; the sort who never could, ever would,
Take a position and staunchly never budge.
A most forgiving man.

But...I shall never take her back!
If she were even crawling on her knees.
Let her promise to atone; let her shiver, let her moan; I'll slam the door and let the hellcat freeze!
Marry Freddy! Ha!

But I'm so used to hear her say good morning ev'ry day,
Her joys, her woes, her highs, her lows are second nature to me now;
Like breathing out and breathing in.

I'm very grateful she's a woman and so easy to forget; rather like a habit one can always break---and yet, I've grown accustomed to the trace of something in the air;
Accustomed to her face.