Eldest Daughter
common language, the inward turning of the mind
“Everybody's so punk on the internet”
“These hunters with cell phones” — the lakes
Community readers connect the lakes' Romantic principle of common, modern language to Eldest Daughter's first verse. The everyday, almost uncomfortable diction the lakes licenses through Romanticism's tenet of plain speech returns, deliberately, in the later song's plain opening, a poetics of the common word turned inward.
innocence reflected back
“Shimmers that innocent light back, like when we were young”
“But the woman who sits by the window has turned out the light” — Peter
Community readers pair Peter with Eldest Daughter as a before-and-after of the same image. Peter ends with the grown woman turning the innocent light out; Eldest Daughter answers years later with a life that shimmers that innocent light back, not the innocence regained but its reflection unexpectedly returned.