Collected Poems

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

  The cane, the wrinkled hands, the special chair:

  Time, doing this to me, may alter too

  My anguish, into something I can bear.

  Aubade

  Cool and beautiful as the blossom of the wild carrot

  With its crimson central eye,

  Round and beautiful as the globe of the onion blossom

  Were her pale breasts whereon I laid me down to die.

  From the wound of my enemy that thrust me through in the dark wood

  I arose; with sweat on my lip and the wild woodgrasses in my spur

  I arose and stood.

  But never did I arise from loving her.

  Sappho Crosses the Dark River into Hades

  Charon, indeed, your dreaded oar,

  With what a peaceful sound it dips

  Into the stream; how gently, too,

  From the wet blade the water drips.

  I knew a ferryman before.

  But he was not so old as you.

  He spoke from unembittered lips,

  With careless eyes on the bright sea

  One day, such bitter words to me

  As age and wisdom never knew.

  This was a man of meagre fame;

  He ferried merchants from the shore

  To Mitylene (whence I came)

  On Lesbos; Phaon is his name.

  I hope that he will never die,

  As I have done, and come to dwell

  In this pale city we approach.

  Not that, indeed, I wish him well,

  (Though never have I wished him harm)

  But rather that I hope to find

  In some unechoing street of Hell

  The peace I long have had in mind:

  A peace whereon may not encroach

  That supple back, the strong brown arm,

  That curving mouth, the sunburned curls;

  But rather that I would rely,

  Having come so far, at such expense,

  Upon some quiet lodging whence

  I need not hear his voice go by

  In scraps of talk with boys and girls.

  Epitaph

  Grieve not for happy Claudius, he is dead;

  And empty is his skull.

  Pity no longer, arm-in-arm with Dread,

  Walks in that polished hall.

  Joy, too, is fled.

  But no man can have all.

  On Thought in Harness

  My falcon to my wrist

  Returns

  From no high air.

  I sent her toward the sun that burns

  Above the mist;

  But she has not been there.

  Her talons are not cold; her beak

  Is closed upon no wonder;

  Her head stinks of its hood, her feathers reek

  Of me, that quake at the thunder.

  Degraded bird, I give you back your eyes forever, ascend now whither you are tossed;

  Forsake this wrist, forsake this rhyme;

  Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost,

  But climb.

  Desolation Dreamed Of

  Desolation dreamed of, though not accomplished,

  Set my heart to rocking like a boat in a swell.

  To every face I met, I said farewell.

  Green rollers breaking white along a clean beach . . . when shall I reach that island?

  Gladly, O painted nails and shaven arm-pits, would I see less of you!

  Gladly, gladly would I he far from you for a long time, O noise and stench of man!

  I said farewell. Nevertheless,

  Whom have I quitted?—which of my possessions do I propose to leave?

  Not one. This feigning to be asleep when wide awake is all the loneliness

  I shall ever achieve.

  The Leaf and the Tree

  When will you learn, my self, to be

  A dying leaf on a living tree?

  Budding, swelling, growing strong,

  Wearing green, but not for long,

  Drawing sustenance from air,

  That other leaves, and you not there,

  May bud, and at the autumn’s call

  Wearing russet, ready to fall?

  Has not this trunk a deed to do

  Unguessed by small and tremulous you?

  Shall not these branches in the end

  To wisdom and the truth ascend?

  And the great lightning plunging by

  Look sidewise with a golden eye

  To glimpse a tree so tall and proud

  It sheds its leaves upon a cloud?

  Here, I think, is the heart’s grief:

  The tree, no mightier than the leaf,

  Makes firm its root and spreads its crown

  And stands; but in the end comes down.

  That airy top no boy could climb

  Is trodden in a little time

  By cattle on their way to drink.

  The fluttering thoughts a leaf can think,

  That hears the wind and waits its turn,

  Have taught it all a tree can learn.

  Time can make soft that iron wood.

  The tallest trunk that ever stood,

  In time, without a dream to keep,

  Crawls in beside the root to sleep.

  On the Wide Heath

  On the wide heath at evening overtaken,

  When the fast-reddening sun

  Drops, and against the sky the looming bracken

  Waves, and the day is done,

  Though no unfriendly nostril snuifs his bone,

  Though English wolves be dead,

  The fox abroad on errands of his own,

  The adder gone to bed,

  The weary traveler from his aching hip

  Lengthens his long stride;

  Though Home be but a humming on his lip,

  No happiness, no pride,

  He does not drop him under the yellow whin

  To sleep the darkness through;

  Home to the yellow light that shines within

  The kitchen of a loud shrew,

  Home over stones and sand, through stagnant water

  He goes, mile after mile

  Home to a wordless poaching son and a daughter

  With a disdainful smile,

  Home to the worn reproach, the disagreeing,

  The shelter, the stale air; content to be

  Pecked at, confined, encroached upon,—it being

  Too lonely, to be free.

  Apostrophe to Man

  (on reflecting that the world is ready to go to war again)

  Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out.

  Breed faster, crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build bombing airplanes;

  Make speeches, unveil statues, issue bonds, parade;

  Convert again into explosives the bewildered ammonia and the distracted cellulose;

  Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies

  The hopeful bodies of the young; exhort,

  Pray, pull long faces, be earnest, be all but overcome, be photographed;

  Confer, perfect your formulae, commercialize

  Bacteria harmful to human tissue,

  Put death on the market;

  Breed, crowd, encroach, expand, expunge yourself, die out,

  Homo called sapiens.

  My Spirit, Sore from Marching

  My spirit, sore from marching

  Toward that receding west

  Where Pity shall be governor,

  With Wisdom for his guest:

  Lie down beside these waters

  That bubble from the spring;

  Hear in the desert silence

  The desert sparrow sing;

  Draw from the shapeless moment

  Such pattern as you can;

  And cleave henceforth to Beauty;

  Expect no more from man.

  Man, with his ready answer,

  His sad and hearty word,

  For every cause in limbo,


  For every debt deferred,

  For every pledge forgotten,

  His eloquent and grim

  Deep empty gaze upon you,—

  Expect no more from him.

  From cool and aimless Beauty

  Your bread and comfort take,

  Beauty, that made no promise,

  And has no word to break;

  Have eyes for Beauty only,

  That has no eyes for you;

  Follow her struck pavilion,

  Halt with her retinue;

  Catch from the board of Beauty

  Such careless crumbs as fall.

  Here’s hope for priest and layman;

  Here’s heresy for all.

  Conscientious Objector

  I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.

  I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.

  He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.

  But I will not hold the bridle while he cinches the girth.

  And he may mount by himself: I will not give him a leg up.

  Though he flick my shoulders with his whip, I will not tell him which way the fox ran.

  With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the black boy hides in the swamp.

  I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.

  I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends nor of my enemies either.

  Though he promise me much, I will not map him the route to any man’s door.

  Am I a spy in the land of the living, that I should deliver men to Death?

  Brother, the password and the plans of our city are safe with me; never through me

  Shall you be overcome.

  Above These Cares

  Above these cares my spirit in calm abiding

  Floats like a swimmer at sunrise, facing the pale sky;

  Peaceful, heaved by the light infrequent lurch of the heavy wave serenely sliding

  Under his weightless body, aware of the wide morning, aware of the gull on the red buoy bedaubed with guano, aware of his sharp cry;

  Idly athirst for the sea, as who should say:

  In a moment I will roll upon my mouth and drink it dry.

  Painfully, under the pressure that obtains

  At the sea’s bottom, crushing my lungs and my brains

  (For the body makes shift to breathe and after a fashion flourish

  Ten fathoms deep in care,

  Ten fathoms down in an element denser than air

  Wherein the soul must perish)

  I trap and harvest, stilling my stomach’s needs;

  I crawl forever, hoping never to see

  Above my head the limbs of my spirit no longer free

  Kicking in frenzy, a swimmer enmeshed in weeds.

  If Still Your Orchards Bear

  Brother, that breathe the August air

  Ten thousand years from now,

  And smell—if still your orchards bear

  Tart apples on the bough—

  The early windfall under the tree,

  And see the red fruit shine,

  I cannot think your thoughts will be

  Much different from mine.

  Should at that moment the full moon

  Step forth upon the hill,

  And memories hard to bear at noon,

  By moonlight harder still,

  Form in the shadows of the trees,—

  Things that you could not spare

  And live, or so you thought, yet these

  All gone, and you still there,

  A man no longer what he was,

  Nor yet the thing he’d planned,

  The chilly apple from the grass

  Warmed by your living hand—

  I think you will have need of tears;

  I think they will not flow;

  Supposing in ten thousand years

  Men ache, as they do now.

  Lines for a Grave-Stone

  Man alive, that mournst thy lot,

  Desiring what thou hast not got,

  Money, beauty, love, what not;

  Deeming it blesseder to be

  A rotted man, than live to see

  So rude a sky as covers thee;

  Deeming thyself of all unblest

  And wretched souls the wretchedest,

  Longing to die and be at rest;

  Know: that however grim the fate

  Which sent thee forth to meditate

  Upon my enviable state,

  Here lieth one who would resign

  Gladly his lot, to shoulder thine.

  Give me thy coat; get into mine.

  How Naked, How Without a Wall

  How naked, how without a wall

  Against the wind and the sharp sleet,

  He fares at night, who fares at all

  Forth from the stove’s heat.

  Or if the moon be in the sky,

  Or if the stars, and the late moon

  Not rising till an hour goes by,

  And Libra setting soon,

  How naked, how without a stitch

  To shut him from the earnest air,

  He goes, who by the whispering ditch

  Alone at night will fare.

  Nor is it but the rising chill

  From the warm weeds, that strikes him cold;

  Nor that the stridulant hedge grows still,

  Like what has breath to hold,

  Until his tiny foot go past

  At length, with its enormous sound;

  Nor yet his helpless shadow cast

  To any wolf around.

  Bare to the moon and her cold rays

  He takes the road, who by and by

  Goes bare beneath the moony gaze

  Of his own awful eye.

  He sees his motive, like a fox

  Hid in a badger’s hole; he sees

  His honour, strangled, in a box,

  Her neck lashed to her knees.

  The man who ventures forth alone

  When other men are snug within,

  Walks on his marrow, not his bone,

  And lacks his outer skin.

  The draughty caverns of his breath

  Grow visible, his heart shines through:

  Surely a thing which only death

  Can have the right to do.

  From Huntsman, What Quarry?

  The Ballad of Chaldon Down

  In April, when the yellow whin

  Was out of doors, and I within,—

  And magpies nested in the thorn

  Where not a man of woman born

  Might spy upon them, save he be

  Content to bide indefinitely

  On Chaldon Heath, hung from a pin,

  A great man in a small thorn tree—

  In April, when, as I have said,

  The golden gorse was all in bloom,

  And I confinèd to my room,

  And there confined to my bed,

  As sick as mortal man could be,

  A lady came from over the sea,

  All for to say good-day to me.

  All in a green and silver gown,

  With half its flounces in her hand,

  She came across the windy down,

  She came, and pricked the furrowed land

  With heels of slippers built for town,

  All for to say good-day to me.

  The Channel fog was in her hair,

  Her cheek was cool with Channel fog;

  Pale cowslips from the sloping hedge,

  And samphire from the salty ledge,

  And the sweet myrtle of the bog

  She brought me as I languished there;

  But of the blackthorn, the blue sloe,

  No branch to lay a body low.

  She came to me by ditch and stile,

  She came to me through heather and brake,

  And many and many a flinty mile
r />   She walked in April for my sake,

  All for to say good-day to me.

  She came by way of Lulworth Cove,

  She came by way of Diffey’s Farm;

  All in a green and silver frock,

  With half its flounces over her arm,

  By the Bat’s Head at dusk she came,

  Where inland from the Channel drove

  The fog, and from the Shambles heard

  The horn above the hidden rock;

  And startled many a wild sea-bird

  To fly unseen from Durdle Door

  Into the fog; and left the shore,

  And found a track without a name

  That led to Chaldon, and so came

  Over the downs to Chydyok,

  All for to say good-day to me.

  All for to ask me only this—

  As she shook out her skirts to dry,

  And laughed, and looked me in the eye,

  And gave me two cold hands to kiss:

  That I be steadfast, that I lie

  And strengthen and forbear to die.

  All for to say that I must be

  Son of my sires, who lived to see

  The gorse in bloom at ninety-three,

  All for to say good-day to me.

  The Princess Recalls Her One Adventure

  Hard is my pillow

  Of down from the duck’s breast,

  Harsh the linen cover;

  I cannot rest.

  Fall down, my tears,

  Upon the fine hem,

  Upon the lonely letters

  Of my long name;

  Drown the sigh of them.

  We stood by the lake

  And we neither kissed nor spoke;

  We heard how the small waves

  Lurched and broke,

  And chuckled in the rock.

  We spoke and turned away.

  We never kissed at all.

  Fall down, my tears.

  I wish that you might fall

  On the road by the lake,

  Where my cob went lame,

  And I stood with the groom

  Till the carriage came.

  Short Story

  In a fine country, in a sunny country,

  Among the hills I knew,

  I built a house for the wren that lives in the orchard,

  And a house for you.

  The house I built for the wren had a round entrance,

  Neat and very small;

  But the house I built for you had a great doorway,

  For a lady proud and tall.

  You came from a country where the shrubby sweet lavender