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Sweet Sister Temperance Lyrics
Sweet Sister Temperance
She of the Marble-hearted innocence,
so eloquent in her mute despair-with two smooth bands of reddish hair.
By some freak of fortune, she fainted while baking in the kitchen,
overturning all her airy schemes,
for great and small and all that's in-between;
for future happiness in a knot of blue field violets,
for her glory and her power, which she found in her final hour,
great and small and all in-between.
Sweet Sister Temperance
She of the Marble-hearted innocence
so eloquent in her mute despair- with two smooth bands of reddish hair.
One can see the consequence of her endless, virtuous penitence
in a scarlet letter or a tender tear, in two smooth bands of reddish hair.
"Poor defeated, I" she cried, "Keep green my memory."
"Poor defeated, I" she cried, "keep green my memory."
We had just laid out the garden, handsome more so now than ever
An exquisite cleanness showing in diamond squares.
She kept us enraptured, gently captured by a tender emotion.
Wild flowers growing, we strode a moonlit path, in silent pairs.
Sweet Sister Temperance
She of the Marble-hearted innocence,
so eloquent in her mute despair-with two smooth bands of reddish hair.
Home is so far from home.
She of the Marble-hearted innocence,
so eloquent in her mute despair-with two smooth bands of reddish hair.
overturning all her airy schemes,
for great and small and all that's in-between;
for future happiness in a knot of blue field violets,
for her glory and her power, which she found in her final hour,
great and small and all in-between.
She of the Marble-hearted innocence
so eloquent in her mute despair- with two smooth bands of reddish hair.
in a scarlet letter or a tender tear, in two smooth bands of reddish hair.
"Poor defeated, I" she cried, "keep green my memory."
An exquisite cleanness showing in diamond squares.
She kept us enraptured, gently captured by a tender emotion.
Wild flowers growing, we strode a moonlit path, in silent pairs.
She of the Marble-hearted innocence,
so eloquent in her mute despair-with two smooth bands of reddish hair.
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The last line ("Home is so far from home") is an Emily Dickenson quote, suggesting that this song is somehow about her, or, knowing Rasputina, about some minute detail of her life.
From Rasputina's website:
"I've never been into poetry, even though song lyrics are a lot like it. I have thought it pretentious sounding, even though I have a ravenous love for words. But I started coming across biographical tidbits about Emily Dickinson – that she wore only white, that she never left the house. I read "My War are Laid Away in Books", by Alfred Habegger, and became obsessed. She is incredibly fascinating – such a strange character. I got so excited about how her poems related to her life. I am interested in artists who were not known or appreciated in their lifetime. J.S. Bach is another one. Now, I wonder why that should interest me so? On Easter Sunday, 1809, my paramour and I visited Emily Dickinson's house in Amherst, Mass. It was a great field-trip. It was a thrill to see her own bedroom and the window where she lowered a basket of brownies to the children below! Her brother's house next door is also very interesting. It's quite decrepit and un-renovated, which is just how I like a house to be. Her letters are as good as her poems, maybe more so in my opinion. I took phrases from her letters and biography for this song. Of course, as always, I also wrote original lines and took applicable turns of phrase from my cut-n-paste computer notebook. This collage writing is my typical way of working. Hey, I've read that the Bible is a collage!
Verse, not used: Clutching a vanilla-scented heliotrope, and a Lady's Slipper orchid, {flowers on Emily's casket} She whispered imploringly to me, {made up} "I could not make up my mind; do you think he ever did?" {from a letter by Emily}"
i feel like this song describes a very Hester Prynne-ish sort of character