Sara Teasdale Sara Teasdale To Cleïs
- (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
- Did you think your mother fair,
- Could you bear her burning eyes?
- Are the songs that soothed your fears
- Vanished like a vanished flame,
- Save the line where shines your name
- Starlike down the graying years? . . .
- Cleis speaks no word to me,
- For the land where she has gone
- Lies as still at dusk and dawn,
- As a windless, tideless sea.
Sara Teasdale