Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BUCOLIC COMEDY: CACOPHONY FOR CLARINET, by EDITH SITWELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BUCOLIC COMEDY: CACOPHONY FOR CLARINET, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Said the dairymaid
Last Line: To play with her endless vacancy of mind!
Subject(s): Farm Life


SAID the dairymaid
With her hooped petticoat
Swishing like water . . .
To the hemlocks she said, "Afraid
Am I of each sheep and goat --
For I am Pan's daughter!"
Dark as Africa and Asia
The vast trees weep --
The Margravine learned as Aspasia,
Has fallen asleep.
Her small head, beribboned
With her yellow satin hair,
Like satin ribbons, butter-yellow,
That the faunal noon has made more mellow
Has drooped asleep . . .
And a snore forlorn
Sounds like Pan's horn.
On pointed toe I creep --
Look through the diamonded pane
Of the window in the dairy --
Then out I slip again,
In my hooped petticoat like old Morgane the fairy.
Like a still-room maid's yellow print gown
Are the glazed chintz buttercups of summer
Where the kingly cock in a feathered smock and a red-gold crown
Rants like a barn-door mummer.
And I heard the Margravine say
To the ancient bewigged Abbe
"I think it is so clever
Of people to discover
New planets -- and how ever
Do they find out what their names are?"
Then, clear as the note of a clarinet, her hair
Called Pan across the fields, Pan like the forlorn wind,
From the Asian, African darkness of the trees in his lair --
To play with her endless vacancy of mind!





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