daughter

People wish to be settled. Only as long as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
-- Thoreau

My life has been
the instrument
for a mouth
I have never seen,
breathing wind
which comes
from I know not
where,
arranging and changing
my moods,
so as to make
an opening
for his voice.

Or hers.
Muse, White Goddess
mother with invisible
milk,
androgynous god
in whose grip
I struggle,
turning this way and that,

In the old Strauss waltz for the first time
We had listened to your quiet call,
Since then all the living things are alien
And the knocking of the clock consoles.

We, like you, are gladly greeting sunsets,
And are drunk on nearness of the end.
All, with which on better nights we're wealthy
Is put in the hearts by your own hand.

Bowing to a child's dreams with no tire.
(Only crescent looked in them indeed
Without you)! You have led your kids past

(The daughter of Sappho)

When the dusk was wet with dew,
Cleïs, did the muses nine
Listen in a silent line
While your mother sang to you?

Did they weep or did they smile
When she crooned to still your cries,
She, a muse in human guise
Who forsook her lyre awhile

Did you hear her wild heart beat?
Did the warmth of all the sun
Through your little body run
When she kissed your hands and feet?

Did your fingers, babywise,
Touch her face and touch her hair

O Autumn, laden with fruit, and stainèd
With the blood of the grape, pass not, but sit
Beneath my shady roof; there thou may'st rest,
And tune thy jolly voice to my fresh pipe,
And all the daughters of the year shall dance!
Sing now the lusty song of fruits and flowers.
`The narrow bud opens her beauties to
The sun, and love runs in her thrilling veins;
Blossoms hang round the brows of Morning, and
Flourish down the bright cheek of modest Eve,
Till clust'ring Summer breaks forth into singing,

Chloris lay off the flapper stuff;
What's fit for Pholoë, a fluff,
Is not for Ibycus's wife--
A woman at your time of life!

Ignore, old dame, such pleasures as
The shimmy and "the Bacchus Jazz";
Your presence with the maidens jars--
You are the cloud that dims the stars.

Your daughter Pholoë may stay
Out nights on the Appian Way;
her love for Nothus, as you know,
Makes her as playful as a doe.

No jazz for you, no jars of wine,
No rose that blooms incarnadine.

Let's straighten this out, my little man,
And reach an agreement if we can.
I entered your door as an honored guest.
My shoes are shined and my trousers are pressed,
And I won't stretch out and read you the funnies
And I won't pretend that we're Easter bunnies.
If you must get somebody down on the floor,
What in the hell are your parents for?
I do not like the things that you say
And I hate the games that you want to play.
No matter how frightfully hard you try,
We've little in common, you and I.

Foolish artist, why must you sketch my face
And hound a goddess eyes cannot detect?
I am the daughter born of Speech and Space,
Babble's mother, a voiceless intellect.
I snatch a word before it disappears
Then mimic mindlessly what I have found.
I am Echo--I live within your ears.
If you believe you can paint me, paint sound.

THOUGH thou did'st hear the tempest from afar,
And felt'st the horrors of the wat'ry war,
To me unknown, yet on this peaceful shore
Methinks I hear the storm tumultuous roar,
And how stern Boreas with impetuous hand
Compell'd the Nereids to usurp the land.
Reluctant rose the daughters of the main,
And slow ascending glided o'er the plain,
Till AEolus in his rapid chariot drove
In gloomy grandeur from the vault above:
Furious he comes. His winged sons obey
Their frantic sire, and madden all the sea.

Oh! form'd by Nature, and refin'd by Art,
With charms to win, and sense to fix the heart!
By thousands sought, Clotilda, canst thou free
Thy croud of captives and descend to me?
Content in shades obscure to waste thy life,
A hidden beauty and a country wife.
O! listen while thy summers are my theme,
Ah! sooth thy partner in his waking dream!
In some small hamlet on the lonely plain,
Where Thames, through meadows, rolls his mazy train;
Or where high Windsor, thick with greens array'd,

WHILE others chant of gay Elysian scenes,
Of balmy zephyrs, and of flow'ry plains,
My song more happy speaks a greater name,
Feels higher motives and a nobler flame.
For thee, O R-----, the muse attunes her strings,
And mounts sublime above inferior things.
I sing not now of green embow'ring woods,
I sing not now the daughters of the floods,
I sing not of the storms o'er ocean driv'n,
And how they howl'd along the waste of heav'n.
But I to R----- would paint the British shore,
And vast Atlantic, not untry'd before: