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Collected Poems

Page 9

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

And buried him in the sea,

  Where never a lie nor a bitter word

  Will out of his mouth at me.

  This I have to hold to my heart,

  This to take by the hand :

  Sweet we were for a summer month

  As the sun on the dry white sand;

  Mild we were for a summer month

  As the wind from over the weirs.

  And blessèd be Death, that hushed with salt

  The harsh and slovenly years!

  Who builds her a house with love for timber

  Builds her a house of foam.

  And I’d liefer be bride to a lad gone down

  Than widow to one safe home.

  The Betrothal

  Oh, come, my lad, or go, my lad,

  And love me if you like.

  I shall not hear the door shut

  Nor the knocker strike.

  Oh, bring me gifts or beg me gifts,

  And wed me if you will.

  I’d make a man a good wife,

  Sensible and still.

  And why should I be cold, my lad,

  And why should you repine,

  Because I love a dark head

  That never will be mine?

  I might as well be easing you

  As lie alone in bed

  And waste the night in wanting

  A cruel dark head.

  You might as well be calling yours

  What never will be his,

  And one of us be happy.

  There’s few enough as is.

  Humoresque

  “Heaven bless the babe!” they said.

  “What queer books she must have read!”

  (Love, by whom I was beguiled,

  Grant I may not bear a child.)

  “Little does she guess to-day

  What the world may be!” they say.

  (Snow, drift deep and cover

  Till the spring my murdered lover.)

  The Pond

  In this pond of placid water,

  Half a hundred years ago,

  So they say, a farmer’s daughter,

  Jilted by her farmer beau,

  Waded out among the rushes,

  Scattering the blue dragon-flies;

  That dried stick the ripple washes

  Marks the spot, I should surmise.

  Think, so near the public highway,

  Well frequented even then!

  Can you not conceive the sly way.—

  Hearing wheels or seeing men

  Passing on the road above,—

  With a gesture feigned and silly,

  Ere she drowned herself for love,

  She would reach to pluck a lily?

  The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver

  “Son,” said my mother,

  When I was knee-high,

  “You’ve need of clothes to cover you,

  And not a rag have I.

  “There’s nothing in the house

  To make a boy breeches,

  Nor shears to cut a cloth with,

  Nor thread to take stitches.

  “There’s nothing in the house

  But a loaf-end of rye,

  And a harp with a woman’s head

  Nobody will buy,”

  And she began to cry.

  That was in the early fall.

  When came the late fall,

  “Son,” she said, “the sight of you

  Makes your mother’s blood crawl,—

  “Little skinny shoulder-blades

  Sticking through your clothes!

  And where you’ll get a jacket from

  God above knows.

  “It’s lucky for me, lad,

  Your daddy’s in the ground,

  And can’t see the way I let

  His son go around!”

  And she made a queer sound.

  That was in the late fall.

  When the winter came,

  I’d not a pair of breeches

  Nor a shirt to my name.

  I couldn’t go to school,

  Or out of doors to play.

  And all the other little boys

  Passed our way.

  “Son,” said my mother,

  “Come, climb into my lap,

  And I’ll chafe your little bones

  While you take a nap.”

  And, oh, but we were silly

  For half an hour or more,

  Me with my long legs

  Dragging on the floor,

  A-rock-rock-rocking

  To a mother-goose rhyme!

  Oh, but we were happy

  For half an hour’s time!

  But there was I, a great boy,

  And what would folks say

  To hear my mother singing me

  To sleep all day,

  In such a daft way?

  Men say the winter

  Was bad that year;

  Fuel was scarce,

  And food was dear.

  A wind with a wolf’s head

  Howled about our door,

  And we burned up the chairs

  And sat upon the floor.

  All that was left us

  Was a chair we couldn’t break,

  And the harp with a woman’s head

  Nobody would take,

  For song or pity’s sake.

  The night before Christmas

  I cried with the cold,

  I cried myself to sleep

  Like a two-year-old.

  And in the deep night

  I felt my mother rise,

  And stare down upon me

  With love in her eyes.

  I saw my mother sitting

  On the one good chair,

  A light falling on her

  From I couldn’t tell where,

  Looking nineteen,

  And not a day older,

  And the harp with a woman’s head

  Leaned against her shoulder.

  Her thin fingers, moving

  In the thin, tall strings,

  Were weav-weav-weaving

  Wonderful things.

  Many bright threads,

  From where I couldn’t see,

  Were running through the harp-strings

  Rapidly,

  And gold threads whistling

  Through my mother’s hand.

  I saw the web grow,

  And the pattern expand.

  She wove a child’s jacket,

  And when it was done

  She laid it on the floor

  And wove another one.

  She wove a red cloak

  So regal to see,

  “She’s made it for a king’s son,”

  I said, “and not for me.”

  But I knew it was for me.

  She wove a pair of breeches

  Quicker than that!

  She wove a pair of boots

  And a little cocked hat.

  She wove a pair of mittens,

  She wove a little blouse,

  She wove all night

  In the still, cold house.

  She sang as she worked,

  And the harp-strings spoke;

  Her voice never faltered,

  And the thread never broke.

  And when I awoke,—

  There sat my mother

  With the harp against her shoulder,

  Looking nineteen,

  And not a day older,

  A smile about her lips,

  And a light about her head,

  And her hands in the harp-strings

  Frozen dead.

  And piled up beside her

  And toppling to the skies,

  Were the clothes of a king’s son,

  Just my size.

  Never May the Fruit Be Plucked

  Never, never may the fruit be plucked from the bough

  And gathered into barrels.

  He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs.

  Though the branches bend like reeds,
r />   Though the ripe fruit splash in the grass or wrinkle on the tree,

  He that would eat of love may bear away with him

  Only what his belly can hold,

  Nothing in the apron,

  Nothing in the pockets.

  Never, never may the fruit be gathered from the bough

  And harvested in barrels.

  The winter of love is a cellar of empty bins,

  In an orchard soft with rot.

  The Concert

  No, I will go alone.

  I will come back when it’s over.

  Yes, of course I love you.

  No, it will not be long.

  Why may you not come with me?—

  You are too much my lover.

  You would Put yourself

  Between me and song.

  If I go alone,

  Quiet and suavely clothed,

  My body will die in its chair,

  And over my head a flame,

  A mind that is twice my own,

  Will mark with icy mirth

  The wise advance and retreat

  Of armies without a country,

  Storming a nameless gate,

  Hurling terrible javelins down

  From the shouting walls of a singing town

  Where no women wait!

  Armies clean of love and hate,

  Marching lines of pitiless sound

  Climbing hills to the sun and hurling

  Golden spears to the ground!

  Up the lines a silver runner

  Bearing a banner whereon is scored

  The milk and steel of a bloodless wound

  Healed at length by the sword!

  You and I have nothing to do with music.

  We may not make of music a filigree frame,

  Within which you and I,

  Tenderly glad we came,

  Sit smiling, hand in hand.

  Come now, be content.

  I will come back to you, I swear I will;

  And you will know me still.

  I shall be only a little taller

  Than when I’went.

  Hyacinth

  I am in love with him to whom a hyacinth is dearer

  Than I shall ever be dear.

  On nights when the field-mice are abroad he cannot sleep:

  He hears their narrow teeth at the bulbs of his hyacinths.

  But the gnawing at my heart he does not hear.

  To One Who Might Have Borne a Message

  Had I known that you were going

  I would have given you messages for her,

  Now two years dead,

  Whom I shall always love.

  As it is, should she entreat you how it goes with me,

  You must reply: as well as with most, you fancy;

  That I love easily, and pass the time.

  And she will not know how all day long between

  My life and me her shadow intervenes,

  A young thin girl,

  Wearing a white skirt and a purple sweater

  And a narrow pale blue ribbon about her hair.

  I used to say to her, “I love you

  Because your face is such a pretty colour,

  No other reason.”

  But it was not true.

  Oh, had I only known that you were going,

  I could have given you messages for her!

  Siege

  This I do, being mad:

  Gather baubles about me,

  Sit in a circle of toys, and all the time

  Death beating the door in.

  White jade and an orange pitcher,

  Hindu idol, Chinese god,—

  Maybe next year, when I’m richer—

  Carved beads and a lotus pod. . . .

  And all this time

  Death beating the door in.

  The Cairn

  When I think of the little children learning

  In all the schools of the world,

  Learning in Danish, learning in Japanese

  That two and two are four, and where the rivers of the world

  Rise, and the names of the mountains and the principal cities,

  My heart breaks.

  Come up, children! Toss your little stones gaily

  On the great cairn of Knowledge!

  (Where lies what Euclid knew, a little grey stone,

  What Plato, what Pascal, what Galileo:

  Little grey stones, little grey stones on a cairn.)

  Tell me, what is the name of the highest mountain?

  Name me a crater of fire! a peak of snow!

  Name me the mountains on the moon!

  But the name of the mountain that you climb all day,

  Ask not your teacher that.

  Spring Song

  I know why the yellow forsythia

  Holds its breath and will not bloom,

  And the robin thrusts his beak in his wing.

  Want me to tell you? Think you can bear it?

  Cover your eyes with your hand and hear it.

  You know how cold the days are still?

  And everybody saying how late the Spring is?

  Well—cover your eyes with your hand—the thing is,

  There isn’t going to be any Spring.

  No parking here! No parking here!

  They said to Spring: No parking here!

  Spring came on as she always does,

  Laid her hand on the yellow forsythia,—

  Little boys turned in their sleep and smiled,

  Dreaming of marbles, dreaming of agates;

  Little girls leapt from their beds to see

  Spring come by with her painted wagons,

  Coloured wagons creaking with wonder—

  Laid her hand on the robin’s throat;

  When up comes you-know-who, my dear,

  You-know-who in a fine blue coat,

  And says to Spring: No parking here!

  No parking here! No parking here!

  Move on! Move on! No parking here!

  Come walk with me in the city gardens.

  (Better keep an eye out for you-know-who)

  Did ever you see such a sickly showing?—

  Middle of June, and nothing growing;

  The gardeners peer and scratch their heads

  And drop their sweat on the tulip-beds,

  But not a blade thrusts through.

  Come, move on! Don’t you know how to walk?

  No parking here! And no back-talk!

  Oh, well,—hell, it’s all for the best.

  She certainly made a lot of clutter,

  Dropping petals under the trees,

  Taking your mind off your bread and butter.

  Anyhow, it’s nothing to me.

  I can remember, and so can you.

  (Though we’d better watch out for you-know-who,

  When we sit around remembering Spring).

  We shall hardly notice in a year or two.

  You can get accustomed to anything.

  Memory of Cape Cod

  The wind in the ash-tree sounds like surf on the shore at Truro .

  I will shut my eyes . . . hush, be still with your silly bleating,

  sheep on Shillingstone Hill . . .

  They said: Come along! They said: Leave your pebbles on the sand and come

  along, it’s long after sunset!

  The mosquitoes will be thick in the pine-woods along by Long Nook, the wind’s

  died down!

  They said: Leave your pebbles on the sand, and your shells, too, and come along,

  we’ll find you another beach like the beach at Truro.

  Let me listen to wind in the ash . . . it sounds like surf on the

  shore.

  From The Buck in the Snow

  Moriturus

  If I could have

  Two things in one:

  The peace of the grave,

  And the light of the sun;

  My hands across

  My thin breast-bon
e,

  But aware of the moss

  Invading the stone,

  Aware of the flight

  Of the golden flicker

  With his wing to the light;

  To hear him nicker

  And drum with his bill

  On the rotted willow;

  Snug and still

  On a grey pillow

  Deep in the clay

  Where digging is hard,

  Out of the way,—

  The blue shard

  Of a broken platter—

  If I might be

  Insensate matter

  With sensate me

  Sitting within,

  Harking and prying,

  I might begin

  To dicker with dying.

  For the body at best

  Is a bundle of aches,

  Longing for rest;

  It cries when it wakes

  “Alas, ’tis light!”

  At set of sun

  “Alas, ’tis night,

  And nothing done!”

  Death, however,

  Is a spongy wall,

  Is a sticky river,

  Is nothing at all.

  Summon the weeper,

  Wail and sing;

  Call him Reaper,

  Angel, King;

  Call him Evil

  Drunk to the lees,

  Monster, Devil,—

  He is less than these.

  Call him Thief,

  The Maggot in the Cheese,

  The Canker in the Leaf,—

  He is less than these.

  Dusk without sound,

  Where the spirit by pain

  Uncoiled, is wound

  To spring again;

  The mind enmeshed

  Laid straight in repose,

  And the body refreshed

  By feeding the rose,—

  These are but visions;

  These would be

  The grave’s derisions,

  Could the grave see.

  Here is the wish

  Of one that died

  Like a beached fish

  On the ebb of the tide:

  That he might wait

  Till the tide came back,

  To see if a crate,

  Or a bottle, or a black

  Boot, or an oar,

  Or an orange peel

  Be washed ashore. . . .

  About his heel

  The sand slips;

  The last he hears

  From the world’s lips

  Is the sand in his ears.

  What thing is little?—

  The aphis hid

  In a house of spittle?

  The hinge of the lid

  Of the spider’s eye

  At the spider’s birth?

  “Greater am I

  By the earth’s girth

  Than Mighty Death.!”

  All creatures cry

  That can summon breath;—

 

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