THE CHANGELING
By James Russell Lowell
I had a little daughter,
And she was given to me
To lead me gently backward
To the Heavenly Father's knee,
That I, by the force of nature,
Might in some dim wise divine
The depth of his infinite patience
To this wayward soul of mine.

I know not how others saw her,
But to me she was wholly fair,
And the light of the heaven she came from
Still lingered and gleamed in her hair;
For it was as wavy and golden,
And as many changes took,
As the shadows of the sun-gilt ripples
On the yellow bed of a brook.

To what can I liken her smiling
Upon me, her kneeling lover,
How it leaped from her lips to her eyelids,
And dimpled her wholly over,
Till her outstretched hands smiled also,
And I almost seemed to see
The very heart of her mother
Sending sun through her veins to me!

She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth,
And it hardly seemed a day,
When a troop of wandering angels
Stole my little daughter away;
Or perhaps those heavenly Zingari
But loosed the hampering strings,
And when they had opened her cage-door,
My little bird used her wings.

But they left in her stead a changeling,
A little angel child,
That seems like her bud in full blossom,
And smiles as she never smiled:
When I wake in the morning, I see it
Where she always used to lie,
And I feel as weak as a violet
Alone 'neath the awful sky.

As weak, yet as trustful also;
For the whole year long I see
All the wonders of faithful Nature
Still worked for the love of me;
Winds wander, and dews drip earthward,
Rain falls, suns rise and set,
Earth whirls, and all but to prosper
A poor little violet.

The child is not mine as the first was,
I cannot sing it to rest,
I cannot lift it up fatherly
And bliss it upon my breast;
Yet it lies in my little one's cradle
And sits in my little one's chair,
And the light of the heaven she's gone to
Transfigures its golden hair.
lilady "Alice in W.land" Inspired - 10 years, 28 days ago

“She rises up out of a sea of faces and embraces me, embraces me passionately--- a thousand eyes, noses, fingers, legs, bottles, windows, purses, saucers all glaring at us an we in each other's arm oblivious. I sit down beside her and she talks--- a flood of talk. Wild consumptive notes of hysteria, perversion, leprosy. I hear not a word because she is beautiful and I love her and now I am happy and willing to die.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
lilady "Alice in W.land" Inspired - 11 years, 2 months, 9 days ago

Continued with the same gifted pen. It’s no use pretending that you are an ordinary woman. Quite clearly, like this pen, you are not. I don’t mean, for a second, that you are in any way comparable with a pen. And yet you are, like this divine pen you are heavy and light at the same time.… How [to] watch the puritanical face relax into slow lust? How to watch that watch catch its breath, and, for a speck of a speck of a millionth of a second, become the animal that all men seek for in their women? And since we’re talking of pens and you, how [to] watch the ink splurge out of the pen … reach[ing] out from the inner depth of the divine body. Will you, incidentally, permit me to fuck you this afternoon? Yours truly (you have just come into the room), R.B.

Love letter from Richard Burton to Elizabeth Taylor

lilady "Alice in W.land" Inspired - 12 years, 1 month, 27 days ago

Intelligence is the greatest aphrodisiac..
lilady "Alice in W.land" Inspired - 12 years, 3 months, 27 days ago