Why would it be a reference to Lolita? I suspect I'm too literal some times.

There's a poem that Humbert writes to Lolita that talks about a starling:

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred days.
Profession: none, or "starlet"

Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?
Why are you hiding, darling?
(I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze
I cannot get out, said the starling).

Where are you riding, Dolores Haze?
What make is the magic carpet?
Is a Cream Cougar the present craze?
And where are you parked, my car pet?

Who is your hero, Dolores Haze?
Still one of those blue-capped star-men?
Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays,
And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen!

Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts!
Are you still dancin', darlin'?
(Both in worn levis, both in torn T-shirts,
And I, in my corner, snarlin').

Happy, happy is gnarled McFate
Touring the States with a child wife,
Plowing his Molly in every State
Among the protected wild life.

My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair,
And never closed when I kissed her.
Know an old perfume called Soliel Vert?
Are you from Paris, mister?

L'autre soir un air froid d'opera m'alita;
Son fele -- bien fol est qui s'y fie!
Il neige, le decor s'ecroule, Lolita!
Lolita, qu'ai-je fait de ta vie?

Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,
Of hate and remorse, I'm dying.
And again my hairy fist I raise,
And again I hear you crying.

Officer, officer, there they go--
In the rain, where that lighted store is!
And her socks are white, and I love her so,
And her name is Haze, Dolores.

Officer, officer, there they are--
Dolores Haze and her lover!
Whip out your gun and follow that car.
Now tumble out and take cover.

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Her dream-gray gaze never flinches.
Ninety pounds is all she weighs
With a height of sixty inches.

My car is limping, Dolores Haze,
And the last long lap is the hardest,
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,
And the rest is rust and stardust.

My personal take on the poem about the daughter is that the starling is there to be a metaphor on finding freedom after struggle, while people watch who know they can't interfere or else make the struggle even harder.

I need to reread "Lolita." I confess I only read it decades ago because it was supposed to be naughty. I'm so low-brow.

I still do that.

I was so disappointed to be bored by "Lady Chatterley's Lover."

Apparently, Peyton Place is supposed to be all scandalous, but I didn't get past the first chapter.

Well, we live in Babylon, pretty much. Things that were shocking then, aren't so, now. I've read neither Lady C, nor Peyton Place--nor Lolita, for that matter.

It wasn't even that the naughtiness in Lady C's Lover was that ho-hum, I just thought all the characters deserved all the misery they were wallowing in. "You don't need a lover!" I yelled at the book, "you need a backbone!"

Lawrence suffers terribly from datedness, I've found. His characters are these dreary, languid, ennui-ridden creatures who seem ashamed of themselves for having feelings.

What's going to age like that that looks okay right now?