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Collected Poems

Page 6

by Edna St. Vincent Millay


  And a book of many

  Waiting to be sold

  For a casual penny,

  In a little open case,

  In a street unclean and cluttered,

  Where a heavy mud is spattered

  From the passing drays,

  Stranger, pause and look;

  From the dust of ages

  Lift this little book,

  Turn the tattered pages,

  Read me, do not let me die!

  Search the fading letters, finding

  Steadfast in the broken binding

  All that once was I!

  When these veins are weeds,

  When these hollowed sockets

  Watch the rooty seeds

  Bursting down like rockets,

  And surmise the spring again,

  Or, remote in that black cupboard,

  Watch the pink worms writhing upward

  At the smell of rain,

  Boys and girls that lie

  Whispering in the hedges,

  Do not let me die,

  Mix me with your pledges;

  Boys and girls that slowly walk

  In the woods, and weep, and quarrel,

  Staring past the pink wild laurel,

  Mix me with your talk,

  Do not let me die!

  Farmers at your raking,

  When the sun is high,

  While the hay is making,

  When, along the stubble strewn,

  Withering on their stalks uneaten,

  Strawberries turn dark and sweeten

  In the lapse of noon;

  Shepherds on the hills,

  In the pastures, drowsing

  To the tinkling bells

  Of the brown sheep browsing;

  Sailors crying through the storm;

  Scholars at your study; hunters

  Lost amid the whirling winter’s

  Whiteness uniform;

  Men that long for sleep;

  Men that wake and revel;—

  If an old song leap

  To your senses’ level

  At such moments, may it be

  Sometimes, though a moment only,

  Some forgotten, quaint and homely

  Vehicle of me!

  Women at your toil,

  Women at your leisure

  Till the kettle boil,

  Snatch of me your pleasure,

  Where the broom-straw marks the leaf;

  Women quiet with your weeping

  Lest you wake a workman sleeping,

  Mix me with your grief!

  Boys and girls that steal

  From the shocking laughter

  Of the old, to kneel

  By a dripping rafter

  Under the discoloured eaves,

  Out of trunks with hingeless covers

  Lifting tales of saints and lovers,

  Travellers, goblins, thieves,

  Suns that shine by night,

  Mountains made from valleys,—

  Bear me to the light,

  Flat upon your bellies

  By the webby window lie,

  Where the little flies are crawling,

  Read me, margin me with scrawling,

  Do not let me die!

  Sexton, ply your trade!

  In a shower of gravel

  Stamp upon your spade!

  Many a rose shall ravel,

  Many a metal wreath shall rust

  In the rain, and I go singing

  Through the lots where you are flinging

  Yellow clay on dust!

  Alms

  My heart is what it was before,

  A house where people come and go;

  But it is winter with your love,

  The sashes are beset with snow.

  I light the lamp and lay the cloth,

  I blow the coals to blaze again;

  But it is winter with your love,

  The frost is thick upon the pane.

  I know a winter when it comes:

  The leaves are listless on the boughs;

  I watched your love a little while,

  And brought my plants into the house.

  I water them and turn them south,

  I snap the dead brown from the stem;

  But it is winter with your love,

  I only tend and water them.

  There was a time I stood and watched

  The small, ill-natured sparrows’ fray;

  I loved the beggar that I fed,

  I cared for what he had to say,

  I stood and watched him out of sight;

  Today I reach around the door

  And set a bowl upon the step;

  My heart is what it was before,

  But it is winter with your love;

  I scatter crumbs upon the sill,

  And close the window,—and the birds

  May take or leave them, as they will.

  Inland

  People that build their houses inland,

  People that buy a plot of ground

  Shaped like a house, and build a house there,

  Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

  Of water sucking the hollow ledges,

  Tons of water striking the shore,—

  What do they long for, as I long for

  One salt smell of the sea once more?

  People the waves have not awakened,

  Spanking the boats at the harbour’s head,

  What do they long for, as I long for,—

  Starting up in my inland bed,

  Beating the narrow walls, and finding

  Neither a window nor a door,

  Screaming to God for death by drowning,—

  One salt taste of the sea once more?

  To a Poet that Died Young

  Minstrel, what have you to do

  With this man that, after you,

  Sharing not your happy fate,

  Sat as England’s Laureate?

  Vainly, in these iron days,

  Strives the poet in your praise,

  Minstrel, by whose singing side

  Beauty walked, until you died.

  Still, though none should hark again,

  Drones the blue-fly in the pane,

  Thickly crusts the blackest moss,

  Blows the rose its musk across,

  Floats the boat that is forgot

  None the less to Camelot.

  Many a bard’s untimely death

  Lends unto his verses breath;

  Here’s a song was never sung:

  Growing old is dying young.

  Minstrel, what is this to you:

  That a man you never knew,

  When your grave was far and green,

  Sat and gossipped with a queen?

  Thalia knows how rare a thing

  Is it, to grow old and sing,

  When the brown and tepid tide

  Closes in on every side.

  Who shall say if Shelley’s gold

  Had withstood it to grow old?

  Wraith

  “Thin Rain, whom are you haunting,

  That you haunt my door?”

  Surely it is not I she’s wanting . . .

  Someone living here before!

  “Nobody’s in the house but me:

  You may come in if you like and see.”

  Thin as thread, with exquisite fingers,—

  Ever seen her, any of you?—

  Grey shawl, and leaning on the wind,

  And the garden showing through?

  Glimmering eyes,—and silent, mostly,

  Sort of a whisper, sort of a purr,

  Asking something, asking it over,

  If you get a sound from her.—

  Ever see her, any of you?—

  Strangest thing I’ve ever known,—

  Every night since I moved in,

  And I came to be alone.

  “Thin Rain, hush with your knocking.!

  You may not come in!

  This is I
that you hear rocking;

  Nobody’s with me, nor has been.!”

  Curious, how she tried the window,—

  Odd, the way she tries the door,—

  Wonder just what sort of people

  Could have had this house before . . .

  Ebb

  I know what my heart is like

  Since your love died:

  It is like a hollow ledge

  Holding a little pool

  Left there by the tide,

  A little tepid pool,

  Drying inward from the edge.

  Elaine

  OK, come again to Astolat!

  I will not ask you to be kind.

  And you may go when you will go,

  And I will stay behind.

  I will not say how dear you are,

  Or ask you if you hold me dear,

  Or trouble you with things for you,

  The way I did last year.

  So still the orchard, Lancelot,

  So very still the lake shall be,

  You could not guess—though you should guess—

  What is become of me.

  So wide shall be the garden-walk,

  The garden-seat so very wide,

  You needs must think—if you should think—

  The lily maid had died.

  Save that, a little way away,

  I’d watch you for a little while,

  To see you speak, the way you speak,

  And smile,—if you should smile.

  Burial

  Mine is a body that should die at sea

  And have for a grave, instead of a grave

  Six feet deep and the length of me,

  All the water that is under the wave!

  And terrible fishes to seize my flesh,

  Such as a living man might fear,

  And eat me while I am firm and fresh,—

  Not wait till I’ve been dead for a year!

  Mariposa

  Butterflies are white and blue

  In this field we wander through.

  Suffer me to take your hand.

  Death comes in a day or two.

  All the things we ever knew

  Will be ashes in that hour:

  Mark the transient butterfly,

  How he hangs upon the flower.

  Suffer me to take your hand.

  Suffer me to cherish you

  Till the dawn is in the sky.

  Whether I be false or true,

  Death comes in a day or two.

  The Little Hill

  Oh, here the air is sweet and still,

  And soft’s the grass to lie on;

  And far away’s the little hill

  They took for Christ to die on.

  And there’s a hill across the brook,

  And down the brook’s another;

  But, oh, the little hill they took,—

  I think I am its mother!

  The moon that saw Gethsemane,

  I watch it rise and set;

  It has so many things to see,

  They help it to forget.

  But little hills that sit at home

  So many hundred years,

  Remember Greece, remember Rome ,

  Remember Mary’s tears.

  And far away in Palestine,

  Sadder than any other,

  Grieves still the hill that I call mine,—

  I think I am its mother.

  Doubt No More that Oheron

  Doubt no more that Oberon—

  Never doubt that Pan

  Lived, and played a reed, and ran

  After nymphs in a dark forest,

  In the merry, credulous days,—

  Lived, and led a fairy band

  Over the indulgent land!

  Ah, for in this dourest, sorest

  Age man’s eye has looked upon,

  Death to fauns and death to fays,

  Still the dog-wood dares to raise—

  Healthy tree, with trunk and root—

  Ivory bowls that bear no fruit,

  And the starlings and the jays—

  Birds that cannot even sing—

  Dare to come again in spring!

  Lament

  Listen, children:

  Your father is dead.

  From his old coats

  I’ll make you little jackets;

  I’ll make you little trousers

  From his old pants.

  There’ll be in his pockets

  Things he used to Put there,

  Keys and pennies

  Covered with tobacco;

  Dan shall have the pennies

  To save in his bank;

  Anne shall have the keys

  To make a pretty noise with.

  Life must go on,

  And the dead be forgotten;

  Life must go on,

  Though good men die;

  Anne, eat your breakfast;

  Dan, take your medicine;

  Life must go on;

  I forget just why.

  Exiled

  Searching my heart for its true sorrow,

  This is the thing I find to be:

  That I am weary of words and people,

  Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

  Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness

  Of the strong wind and shattered spray;

  Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound

  Of the big surf that breaks all day.

  Always before about my dooryard,

  Marking the reach of the winter sea,

  Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,

  Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea;

  Always I climbed the wave at morning,

  Shook the sand from my shoes at night,

  That now am caught beneath great buildings,

  Stricken with noise, confused with light.

  If I could hear the green piles groaning

  Under the windy wooden piers,

  See once again the bobbing barrels,

  And the black sticks that fence the weirs,

  If I could see the weedy mussels

  Crusting the wrecked and rotting hulls,

  Hear once again the hungry crying

  Overhead, of the wheeling gulls,

  Feel once again the shanty straining

  Under the turning of the tide,

  Fear once again the rising freshet,

  Dread the bell in the fog outside,

  I should be happy!—that was happy

  All day long on the coast of Maine;

  I have a need to hold and handle

  Shells and anchors and ships again!

  I should be happy . . . that am happy

  Never at all since I came here.

  I am too long away from water.

  I have a need of water near.

  The Death of Autumn

  When reeds are dead and a straw to thatch the marshes,

  And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind

  Like aged warriors westward, tragic, thinned

  Of half their tribe; and over the flattened rushes,

  Stripped of its secret, open, stark and bleak,

  Blackens afar the half-forgotten creek,—

  Then leans on me the weight of the year, and crushes

  My heart. I know that Beauty must ail and die,

  And will be born again,—but ah, to see

  Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky!

  Oh, Autumn! Autumn!—What is the Spring to me?

  Ode to Silence

  Aye, but she?

  Your other sister and my other soul,

  Grave Silence, lovelier

  Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?

  Clio, not you,

  Not you, Calliope,

  Nor all your wanton line,

  Not Great Apollo’s self shall comfort me

  For Silence once departed,

  For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,

  Whom everm
ore I follow wistfully,

  Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;

  Thalia, not you,

  Not you, Melpomene,

  Not your incomparable feet, O thin Terpsichore,

  I seek in this great hall,

  But one more pale, more pensive, most beloved of you all.

  I seek her from afar.

  I come from temples where her altars are;

  From groves that bear her name;—

  Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame,

  And cymbals struck on high and strident faces

  Obstreperous in her praise

  They neither love nor know,

  A goddess of gone days,

  Departed long ago,

  Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes

  Of her old sanctuary,

  A deity obscure and legendary,

  Of whom there now remains,

  For sages to decipher and priests to garble,

  Only and for a little while her letters wedged in marble;

  Which even now, behold, the friendly mumbling rain erases,

  And the inarticulate snow,

  Leaving at last of her least signs and traces

  None whatsoever, nor whither she is vanished from these places.

  “She will love well,” I said,

  “If love be of that heart inhabiter,

  The flowers of the dead:

  The red anemone that with no sound

  Moves in the wind; and from another wound

  That sprang, the heavily-sweet blue hyacinth,

  That blossoms underground;

  And sallow poppies, will be dear to her.

  And will not Silence know

  In the black shade of what obsidian steep

  Stiffens the white narcissus numb with sleep?

  (Seed which Demeter’s daughter bore from home,

  Uptorn by desperate fingers long ago,

  Reluctant even as she,

  Undone Persephone,

  And even as she, set out again to grow,

  In twilight, in perdition’s lean and inauspicious loam)

  “She will love well,” I said,

  “The flowers of the dead.

  Where dark Persephone the winter round,

  Uncomforted for home, uncomforted,

  Lacking a sunny southern slope in northern Sicily,

  With sullen pupils focussed on a dream

  Stares on the stagnant stream

  That moats the unequivocable battlements of Hell,

  There, there will she be found,

  She that is Beauty veiled from men and Music in a swound.”

  “I long for Silence as they long for breath

  Whose helpless nostrils drink the bitter sea;

  What thing can be

  So stout, what so redoubtable, in Death

 

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