Collected Poems

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Save for the weapons of its skull, a bull

  Unarmed, considering, weighing, charging

  Almost a world, itself without ally.

  Say that we saw the shoulders more than the mind confused, so profusely

  Bleeding from so many more than the accustomed barbs, the game gone vulgar, the rules abused.

  Say that we saw Spain die from loss of blood, a rustic reason, in a reinforced

  And proud punctilious land, no espada—

  A hundred men unhorsed,

  A hundred horses gored, and the afternoon aging, and the crowd growing restless (all, all so much later than planned),

  And the big head heavy, sliding forward in the sand, and the tongue dry with sand,—no espada

  Toward that hot neck, for the delicate and final thrust, having dared trust forth his hand.

  Underground System

  Set the foot down with distrust upon the crust of the world—it is thin.

  Moles are at work beneath us; they have tunnelled the sub-soil

  With separate chambers, which at an appointed knock

  Could be as one, could intersect and interlock. We walk on the skin

  Of life. No toil

  Of rake or hoe, no lime, no phosphate, no rotation of crops, no irrigation of the land,

  Will coax the limp and flattened grain to stand

  On that bad day, or feed to strength the nibbled roots of our nation.

  Ease has demoralized us, nearly so; we know

  Nothing of the rigours of winter: the house has a roof against— the car a top against—the snow.

  All will be well, we say; it is a habit, like the rising of the sun,

  For our country to prosper; who can prevail against us? No one.

  The house has a roof; but the boards of its floor are rotting, and hall upon hall

  The moles have built their palace beneath us; we have not far to fall.

  Two Voices

  FIRST VOICE

  Let us be circumspect, surrounded as we are

  By every foe but one, and he from the woods watching.

  Let us be courteous, since we cannot be wise, guilty of no neglect,

  pallid with seemly terror, yet regarding with indulgent eyes

  Violence, and compromise.

  SECOND VOICE

  We shall learn nothing; or we shall learn it too late. Why should we wait

  For Death, who knows the road so well? Need we sit hatching—

  Such quiet fowl as we, meek to the touch,—a clutch of adder’s

  eggs? Let us not turn them; let us not keep the m warm;

  let us leave our nests and flock and tell

  All that we know, all that we can piece together, of a time when all went, or seemed to go, well.

  Mortal Flesh, Is Not Your Place in the Ground?

  Mortal flesh, is not your place in the ground?—Why do you stare so

  At the bright planet serene in the clear green evening sky above the many-coloured streaked clouds?—

  Your brows drawn together as if to chide, your mouth set as if in anger.

  Learn to love blackness while there is yet time, blackness

  Unpatterned, blackness without horizons.

  Beautiful are the trees in autumn, the emerald pines

  Dark among the light-red leaves of the maple and the dark-red

  Leaves of the white oak and the indigo long

  Leaves of the white ash.

  But why do you stand so, staring with stern face of ecstasy at the autumn leaves,

  At the boughs hung with banners along the road as if a procession were about to pass?

  Learn to love roots instead, that soon above your head shall be as branches.

  No Earthly Enterprise

  No earthly enterprise

  Will cloud this vision; so beware,

  You whom I love, when you are weak, of seeking comfort stair by stair

  Up here: which leads nowhere.

  I am at home—oh, I am safe in bed and well tucked in—Despair

  Put out the light beside my bed.

  I smiled, and closed my eyes.

  “Goodnight—goodnight,” she said.

  But you, you do not like this frosty air.

  Cold of the sun’s eclipse,

  When cocks crow for the first time hopeless, and dogs in kennel howl,

  Abandoning the richly-stinking bone,

  And the star at the edge of the shamed and altered sun shivers alone,

  And over the pond the bat but not the swallow dips,

  And out comes the owl.

  Lines Written in Recapitulation

  I could not bring this splendid world nor any trading beast

  In charge of it, to defer, no, not to give ear, not in the least

  Appearance, to my handsome prophecies, which here I ponder and put by.

  I am left simpler, less encumbered, by the consciousness that I

  shall by no pebble in my dirty sling avail

  To slay one purple giant four feet high and distribute arms

  among his tall attendants, who spit at his name when spit-ting on the ground:

  They will be found one day

  Prone where they fell, or dead sitting—and a pockmarked wall

  Supporting the beautiful back straight as an oak before it is old.

  I have learned to fail. And I have had my say.

  Yet shall I sing until my voice crack (this being my leisure, this my holiday)

  That man was a special thing and no commodity, a thing improper to be sold.

  This Dusky Faith

  Why, then, weep not,

  Since naught’s to weep.

  Too wild, too hot

  For a dead thing,

  Altered and cold,

  Are these long tears:

  Relinquishing

  To the sovereign force

  Of the pulling past

  What you cannot hold

  Is reason’s course.

  Wherefore, sleep.

  Or sleep to the rocking

  Rather, of this:

  The silver knocking

  Of the moon’s knuckles

  At the door of the night;

  Death here becomes

  Being, nor truckles

  To the sun, assumes

  Light as its right.

  So, too, this dusky faith

  In Man, transcends its death,

  Shines out, gains emphasis;

  Shorn of the tangled past,

  Shows its fine skull at last,

  Cold, lovely satellite.

  Truce for a Moment

  Truce for a moment between Earth and Ether

  Slackens the mind’s allegiance to despair:

  Shyly confer earth, water, fire and air

  With the fifth essence.

  For the duration, if the mind require it,

  Trigged is the wheel of Time against the slope;

  Infinite Space lies curved within the scope

  Of the hand’s cradle.

  Thus between day and evening in the autumn,

  High in the west alone and burning bright,

  Venus has hung, the earliest riding-light

  In the calm harbour.

  From Make Bright the Arrows

  To the Maid of Orleans

  Joan, Joan, can you be

  Tending sheep in Domrémy?

  Have no voices spoken plain:

  France has need of you again?—

  You, so many years ago

  Welcomed into Heaven, we know

  Maiden without spot or taint,

  First as foundling, then as saint.

  Or do faggot, stake and torch

  In your memory roar and scorch

  Till no sound of voice comes through

  Saying France has need of you?

  Joan, Joan, hearken still,

  Hearken, child, against your will:

  Saint thou art, but at the price

  Of recurring sacrifice;
>
  Martyred many times must be

  Who would keep his country free.

  Memory of England (October 1940)

  I am glad, I think, my happy mother died

  Before the German airplanes over the English countryside

  Dropped bombs into the peaceful hamlets that we used to know—

  Sturminster-Newton, and the road that used to run

  Past bridge, past cows in meadow,

  Warm in the sun,

  Cool in the elm-tree’s shadow,

  To the thatched cottage roofs of Shillingstone;

  Dropped bombs on Romsey Abbey, where the aging records show

  (Or did a little while ago)

  In faded ink and elegant fine hand

  The name of a boy baby christened there

  In 15—(I forget the year)

  Later to sail away to this free land

  And build in what is now named Massachusetts a new Romsey here.

  (My ancestor,—I still can see the page,

  Our sentimental journey, our quaint pilgrimage!)

  Dorset and Hampshire were our home in England: the tall holly trees, the chestnuts that we found

  Glossy within their shaggy burrs on the cold autumn ground

  In the New Forest, new in the Norman’s day, where we walked alone,

  Easing at times our joyful weary backs

  By shifting to a stump the weight of our small shoulder-packs,

  Meeting no living creature all one lovely day

  But trees and ferns and bracken and, directly in our way

  Or grazing near at hand,

  From time to time a herd of small wild ponies; well aware

  Of imminent sunset—and we two alone long miles from anywhere.

  All that we moved among, heath, bracken, hollies with round berries red

  Bright for an English Christmas, beech and oak,

  Chestnut, with its sweet mealy food

  On the leaves thick about us in the autumn air

  Plentiful, gleaming from its rough burrs everywhere-All this was good,

  And all had speech, and spoke,

  And all the magic unfamiliar land

  Was ours by distant heritage and ours by deep love close at hand.

  How many miles we walked I now forget, dog-tired at night

  Spying an inn’s warm light

  Through small-paned windows thrown,—

  To Romsey, and then back to Shillingstone.

  So gravely threatened now

  That lovely village under the Barrow’s brow,

  Where peering from my window at dawn under the shelving thatch

  With cold bare feet and neck scratched by the straw

  I saw the hounds go by;

  So gravely threatened the kind people there,

  She in her neat front flower plot,

  He like as not

  Up in the ’lotment hoeing,

  Or coming home to his supper of beer and cheese,

  Bread and shallots,

  These thoughts . . .

  And thoughts like these . . .

  Make me content that she, not I,

  Went first, went without knowing.

  Poems Which Have Not Appeared in Any of the Previous Volumes

  The Pear Tree

  In this squalid, dirty dooryard

  Where the chickens squawk and run,

  White, incredible, the pear tree

  Stands apart, and takes the sun;

  Mindful of the eyes upon it,

  Vain of its new holiness,—

  Like the waste-man’s little daughter

  In her First Communion dress.

  Tree Ceremonies (Vassar College, 1913)

  Druids’ Chant

  Great voice that calls us in the wind of dawn,

  Strange voice that stills us in the heat of noon,

  Heard in the sunset,

  Heard in the moonrise

  And in the stirring of the wakeful night,

  Speak now in blessing,

  Chide us no longer,

  Great voice of love, we will not grieve thee more.

  Song of the Nations

  Out of

  Night and alarm,

  Out of

  Darkness and dread,

  Out of old hate,

  Grudge and distrust,

  Sin and remorse,

  Passion and blindness;

  Shall come

  Dawn and the birds,

  Shall come

  Slacking of greed,

  Snapping of fear—

  Love shall fold warm like a cloak

  Round the shuddering earth

  Till the sound of its woe cease.

  After

  Terrible dreams,

  After

  Crying in sleep,

  Grief beyond thought,

  Twisting of hands,

  Tears from shut lids

  Wetting the pillow;

  Shall come

  Sun on the wall,

  Shall come

  Sounds from the street,

  Children at play—

  Bubbles too big blown, and dreams

  Filled too heavy with horror

  Will burst and in mist fall.

  Sing then,

  You who were dumb,

  Shout then

  Into the dark;

  Are we not one?

  Are not our hearts

  Hot from one fire,

  And in one mold cast?

  Out of

  Night and alarm,

  Out of

  Terrible dreams,

  Reach me your hand,

  This is the meaning of all that we

  Suffered in sleep,—the white peace

  Of the waking.

  Baccalaureate Hymn (Vassar College, 1917)

  Thou great offended God of love and kindness,

  We have denied, we have forgotten Thee!

  With deafer sense endow, enlighten us with blindness,

  Who, having ears and eyes, nor hear nor see.

  Bright are the banners on the tents of laughter;

  Shunned is Thy temple, weeds are on the path;

  Yet if Thou leave us, Lord, what help is ours thereafter?—

  Be with us still,—Light not today Thy wrath!

  Dark were the ways where of ourselves we sought Thee,

  Anguish, Derision, Doubt, Desire and Mirth;

  Twisted, obscure, unlovely, Lord, the gifts we brought Thee,

  Teach us what ways have light, what gifts have worth.

  Since we are dust, how shall we not betray Thee?

  Still blows about the world the ancient wind—

  Nor yet for lives untried and tearless would we pray Thee:

  Lord let us suffer that we may grow kind!

  “Lord, Lord!” we cried of old, who now before Thee,

  Stricken with prayer, shaken with praise, are dumb;

  Father accept our worship when we least adore Thee,

  And when we call Thee not, oh, hear and come!

  Facsimile of original broadside of Baccalaureate Hymn

  Invocation to the Muses

  Read by the poet at The Public Ceremonial of The National Institute of Arts and Letters at Carnegie Hall, New York, January 18th, 1941.

  Great Muse, that from this hall absent for long

  Hast never been,

  Great Muse of Song,

  Colossal Muse of mighty Melody,

  Vocal Calliope,

  With thine august and contrapuntal brow

  And thy vast throat builded for Harmony,

  For the strict monumental pure design,

  And the melodic line:

  Be thou tonight with all beneath these rafters—be with me.

  If I address thee in archaic style—

  Words obsolete, words obsolescent,

  It is that for a little while

  The heart must, oh, indeed must from this angry and outrageous present

  Itself withdraw
r />   Into some past in which most crooked Evil,

  Although quite certainly conceived and born, was not as yet the Law.

  Archaic, or obsolescent at the least,

  Be thy grave speaking and the careful words of thy clear song,

  For the time wrongs us, and the words most common to our speech today

  Salute and welcome to the feast

  Conspicuous Evil—or against him all day long

  Cry out, telling of ugly deeds and most uncommon wrong.

  Be thou tonight with all beneath these rafters—be with me;

  But oh, be more with those who are not free.

  Who, herded into prison camps all shame must suffer and all outrage see.

  Where music is not played nor sung,

  Though the great voice be there, no sound from the dry throat across the thickened tongue

  Comes forth; nor has he heart for it.

  Beauty in all things—no, we cannot hope for that; but some

  place set apart for it.

  Here it may dwell;

  And with your aid, Melpomene

  And all thy sister-muses (for ye are, I think, daughters of Memory)

  Within the tortured mind as well.

  Reaped are those fields with dragon’s-teeth so lately sown;

  Many the heaped men dying there—so close, hip touches thigh; yet each man dies alone.

  Music, what overtone

  For the soft ultimate sigh or the unheeded groan

  Hast thou—to make death decent, where men slip

  Down blood to death, no service of grieved heart or ritual lip

  Transferring what was recently a man and still is warm—

  Transferring his obedient limbs into the shallow grave where not again a friend shall greet him,

  Nor hatred do him harm . . .

  Nor true love run to meet him?

  In the last hours of him who lies untended

  On a cold field at night, and sees the hard bright stars

  Above his upturned face, and says aloud, “How strange . . . my life is ended.”—

  If in the past he loved great music much, and knew it well,

  Let not his lapsing mind be teased by well-beloved but illremembered bars—

  Let the full symphony across the blood· soaked field

  By him be heard, most pure in every part,

  The lonely horror of whose painful death is thus repealed,