Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DAPHNE, by HILDEGARDE FLANNER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DAPHNE, by                    
First Line: They told her she had hair the color
Last Line: Silence turned and slept.
Subject(s): Daphne (mythology)


They told her she had hair the color
Of a nightingale.
They told her that her eyes were candles
Lit beneath a veil.

They praised her feet like narrow doves
Mated on the floor,
Saying there were never feet
Like her feet before.

They praised her shining voice that rang
Like stars dropped in a glass.
"Sing to thy little yellow shell!"
And so the night would pass.

But when they came too near to her
And touched her with the hand,
She drew her hair across her eyes.
She could not understand.

And when they said a thing to her
That she had never heard,
Her heart plunged into silence there
Like a hunted bird.

She caught her violet mantle close,
The Tyrian upon the white.
She quivered like a little twig.
She stepped into the night.

They called her name within the dark,
They searched beneath the sun,
But there was not a broken flower
To show where she had run.

Everything was very still,
Far too still, they said.
So they turned and went away,
Unaccompanied.

Nothing moved where they had sought,
Nothing sang or wept.
Beneath a tree that had no name,
Silence turned and slept.





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