Explore "To Cleis" by Sara Teasdale on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"I have a fair daughter with a form like a golden flower, / Cleis, the beloved. " / Sapphic fragment.
When the dusk was wet with dew, / Cleis, 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 feel her wild heart beat? / Did the warmth of all the sun / Thro' 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 / Lieth mute at dusk and dawn / Like a windless tideless sea.