Collected Poems

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

  porpoises were gone,

  Leaving the sea bare.

  We turned from staring aft, and dead ahead, a mile away,

  It seemed, through the thick steam of a white boiling surf and

  through smashed spray,

  Saw the tall naked grooved precipitous sides and concave top

  Of a volcanic island—its volcano now extinct,

  It seemed; but it was hard to say.

  From its high crater no red flame

  Was seen to pulse and pour

  But was it indeed or was it alone the steam from the burning

  breakers that kept us from seeing more?

  There was no harbour. Those steep sides without a strand

  Went down.

  Yet even as from eye to brain this swift perception flashed,

  there seemed to reach

  Even more swiftly toward us from that island now

  miraculously in height and size increased

  A broadening sandless beach

  Humped with round boulders mossed with brightest green,

  And purple with prostrate sea-ferns and stiff upright purple

  fans;

  Red with anemones, and brilliant blue, and yellow dotted with

  black

  From many fishes, lashing in the draining pools

  Or sliding down the narrow sluices from the encroaching land

  to the receding sea.

  The water thinned; we saw beneath us now

  The bottom clearly; and from the vessel’s bow

  Saw close ahead, in shallow pool or dripping crevice caught,

  The lovely fishes, rosy with azure fins or cobalt blue or yellow

  striped with black,

  Curve their bright bodies double and lash forth and leap and

  then fall back with heavy splash

  Or from the crevice leap and on the slippery weeds slide down

  once more into the narrow crack.

  The thump and scrape of our keel upon the shore

  Shook us from horror to a friendly sound!

  Danger, maybe death, but decent, and the cause known.

  Yet neither hook nor oar

  Was overside before a Wave like a giant’s palm

  Was under us and raising us, gently, straight into the sky.

  We rose beside the cliffs; we passed them so close by

  We saw some little plants with reddish-purple flowers

  Growing in a rock; and lying on a narrow ledge

  Some birds’ eggs; and some birds screamed at us as we passed.

  The Wave did not break against the cliff; with utmost calm

  It lifted us. The cliff had niches now where green grass grew.

  And on a foot-high bush in a cleft some raspberries were ripe.

  And then at last

  We saw the crater’s edge.

  The Wave curved over the rim and set us down in a cradle of

  branches, and withdrew.

  It has not returned. Far down, the roaring of the sea abates

  From hour to hour. The sky above our bowl is blue.

  Who hurt you so,

  My dear?

  Who, long ago

  When you were very young,

  Did, said, became, was . . . something that you did not know

  Beauty could ever do, say, be, become?—

  So that your brown eyes filled

  With tears they never, not to this day, have shed . . .

  Not because one more boy stood hurt by life,

  No : because something deathless had dropped dead—

  An ugly, an indecent thing to do—

  So that you stood and stared, with open mouth in which the

  tongue

  Froze slowly backward toward its root,

  As if it would not speak again, too badly stung

  By memories thick as wasps about a nest invaded

  To know if or if not you suffered pain.

  When the tree-sparrows with no sound through the pearl-pale

  air

  Of dawn, down the apple-branches, stair by stair,

  With utmost, unforgettable, elegance and grace

  Descended to the bare ground (never bare

  Of small strewn seeds

  For forced-down flyers at this treacherous time of year),

  And richly and sweetly twittered there,

  I pressed my forehead to the window, butting the cold glass

  Till I feared it might break, disturbing the sparrows, so let the

  moment pass

  When I had hoped to recapture the rapture of my dark dream;

  I had heard as I awoke my own voice thinly scream,

  “Where? in what street? (I knew the city) did they attack

  You, bound for home?”

  You were, of course, not there.

  And I of course wept, remembering where I last had met you,

  Yet clawed with desperate nails at the sliding dream, screaming

  not to lose, since I cannot forget you.

  I felt the hot tears come;

  Streaming with useless tears, which make the ears roar and the

  eyelids swell,

  My blind face sought the window-sill

  To cry on—frozen mourning melted by sly sleep,

  Slapping hard-bought repose with quick successive blows until

  it whimper and outright weep.

  The tide pulls twice a day,

  The sunlit and the moonlit tides

  Drag the rough ledge away

  And bring back seaweed, little else besides.

  Oh, do not weep these tears salter than the flung spray!—

  Weepers are the sea’s brides . . .

  I mean this the drowning way.

  Amorphous is the mind; its quality

  Is in its fibre, not its form;

  If it desire to fly it puts on wings,

  Awkwardly, not like a bird

  At first (though later); the rustle of a thing half-heard

  Can twist it as iron at times is twisted by a wind-storm or word

  after word

  Can pummel it for hours yet leave it like a leaf on a still day

  unstirred.

  But a man’s habit clings

  And he will wear tomorrow what today he wears.

  The mind is happy in the air, happy to be up there with

  Learning feathers, but the man loathes it.

  The mind cries “Up! Oh, up! Oh, let me try to fly!

  Look! I can lift you!” but he smothers its cry;

  Out of thrift, and fear of next year’s feathers, he clothes it in

  last year’s things

  And tries his best to button across a keel-shaped breast a coat

  knobbed out by new wings.

  For Warmth Alone, for Shelter Only

  For warmth alone, for shelter only

  From the cold anger of the eyeless wind,

  That knows my whereabouts, and mainly

  To be at your door when I go down

  Is abroad at all tonight in town,

  I left my phrase in air, and sinned,

  Laying my head against your arm

  A moment, and as suddenly

  Withdrawing it, and sitting there,

  Warmed a little but far from warm,

  And the wind still waiting at the foot of the stair,

  And much harm done, and the phrase in air.

  The Agnostic

  The tired agnostic longs for prayer

  More than the blest can ever do:

  Between the chinks in his despair,

  From out his forest he peeps through

  Upon a clearing sunned so bright

  He cups his eyeballs from its light.

  He for himself who would decide

  What thing is black, what thing is white,

  Whirls with the whirling spectrum wide,

  Runs with the running spectrum through

  Red, orange, yellow, green and blue

  And purpl
e,—turns and stays his stride

  Abruptly, reaching left and right

  To catch all colours into light—

  But light evades him : still he stands

  With rainbows streaming through his hands.

  He knows how half his hours are spent

  In blue or purple discontent,

  In red or yellow hate or fright,

  And fresh young green whereon a blight

  Sits down in orange overnight.

  Yet worships still the ardent sod

  For every ripped and ribboned hue,

  For warmth of sun and breath of air,

  And beauty met with everywhere;

  Not knowing why, not knowing who

  Pumps in his breath and sucks it out,

  Nor unto whom his praise is due.

  Yet naught nor nobody obeys

  But his own heart, which bids him, “Praise!”

  This, knowing that doubled were his days

  Could he but rid his mind of doubt—

  Yet will not rid him, in such ways

  Of awful dalliance with despair—

  And, though denying, not betrays.

  The apple-trees bud, but I do not.

  Who forgot

  April?

  Happiness, happiness, which once I held in my hand,

  Does it persist?

  Does it exist,

  Perhaps, in some foreign land?

  Did it expand

  Somewhere into something that would twist my wrist?

  Does it exist,

  Sweeter than I could bear,

  Anywhere?

  There is no speed

  In Indianapolis, or in Monte Carlo,

  Which can exceed the awful speed of my thought.

  These tiny Fiats and Bugattis

  With the behind-them bespectacled

  Looking like beetles, men who must go fast

  In order to live, in order to outlast

  Those that pile up on sand bags,

  There is nothing so fast,

  I find, as the motion of the mind.

  Why did you, June, June,

  So suddenly

  Arrive at noon

  In the midst of July?

  I was not prepared

  For the deferred appearance

  Of your purple-haired adherence

  To all that we live for.

  What can I give for

  Your knowledge

  Of when to expand

  And when to contract—

  This instructed, more academic college

  Of when to act?

  Oh sovereign angel,

  Wide winged stranger above a forgetful earth,

  Care for me, care for me. Keep me unaware of danger

  And not regretful

  And not forgetful of my innocent birth.

  If ever I should get warm

  Again, which I somewhat doubt,

  I shall light two candles,

  One to St. Christopher

  And one for me,

  To keep us out

  Of danger, and free from harm

  In our adventurous voyage

  Over cold

  Unseen sea.

  Black hair you’d say she had, or rather

  Black crest, black nape and black lore-feather

  Above the eye; eye black, and ring

  About it white, white breast and wing;

  Soft bill; (no predatory thing—

  Three claws in front and one in back

  But sparrow-fingered, for attack

  Unfitted)—yet the questioning,

  The desperate notes I did not hear,

  Being pitched too high for human ear,

  But seen so plainly in the eye

  She turned upon me urgently

  And watched me with as she went by

  And close before me following,

  Perching, and ever peering back,

  Uttered, I know, some desperate cry,

  I might have answered, had I heard:—

  Ah, no; ah, no; poor female bird

  With unmelodious throat and wing:

  Sit on your eggs, by crimson king

  Or gold made fertile; hatch them, bring

  Beauty to birth, that it may sing

  And leave you; be not haggard; cling

  To what you have: a coloured thing

  That grows more coloured every spring,

  And whilst you warm his eggs, no lack

  Will let you suffer: when they crack—

  Feed them, and feed yourself; whilst he

  Hangs from a thistle drunkenly,

  Or loops his little flights between

  The maple and the evergreen.

  Utter your querulous chirp or quack;

  And if his voice be anything,

  Why, shut your lids and hear him sing,

  And when he wants you, take him back.

  Cave Canem

  Importuned through the mails, accosted over the telephone,

  overtaken by running footsteps, caught by the sleeve, the

  servant of strangers,

  While amidst the haste and confusion lover and friend quietly

  step into the unreachable past,

  I throw bright time to chickens in an untidy yard.

  Through foul timidity, through a gross indisposition to excite

  the ill-will of even the most negligible,

  Disliking voices raised in anger, faces with no love in them,

  I avoid the looming visitor,

  Flee him adroitly around corners,

  Hating him, wishing him well;

  Lest if he confront me I be forced to say what is in no wise

  true:

  That he is welcome; that I am unoccupied;

  And forced to sit while the potted roses wilt in the crate or the

  sonnet cools

  Bending a respectful nose above such dried philosophies

  As have hung in wreaths from the rafters of my house

  I was a child.

  Some trace of kindliness in this, no doubt,

  There may be.

  But not enough to keep a bird alive.

  There is a flaw amounting to a fissure

  In such behaviour.

  An Ancient Gesture

  I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:

  Penelope did this too.

  And more than once: you can’t keep weaving all day

  And undoing it all through the night;

  Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;

  And along towards morning, when you think it will never be

  light,

  And your husband has been gone, and you don’t know where,

  for years,

  Suddenly you burst into tears;

  There is simply nothing else to do.

  And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:

  This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,

  In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;

  Ulysses did this too.

  But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied

  To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.

  He learned it from Penelope . . .

  Penelope, who really cried.

  Jesus to His Disciples

  I have instructed you to follow me

  What way I go;

  The road is hard, and stony,—as I know;

  Uphill it climbs, and from the crushing heat

  No shelter will be found

  Save in my shadow: wherefore follow me; the footprints

  feet

  Will be distinct and clear;

  However trodden on, they will not disappear.

  And see ye not at last

  How tall I am?—Even at noon I cast

  A shadow like a forest far behind me on the ground.

  Establishment is shocked. Stir no adventure

  Upon this splitted granite.

>   I will no longer connive

  At my own destruction:—I will not again climb,

  Breaking my finger nails, out of reach of the reaching wave,

  To save

  What I hope will still be me

  When I have slid on slime and clutched at slippery rock-weed,

  and had my face towed under

  In scrubbing pebbles, under the weight of the wave and its

  thunder.

  I decline to scratch at this cliff. If is not a word.

  I will connive no more

  With that which hopes and plans that I shall not survive:

  Let the tide keep its distance;

  Or advance, and be split for a moment by a thing very small but

  all resistance;

  Then do its own chore.

  Some Things Are Dark

  Some things are dark—or think they are.

  But, in comparison to me,

  All things are light enough to see

  In any place, at any hour.

  For I am Nightmare: where I fly,

  Terror and rain stand in the sky

  So thick, you could not tell them from

  That blackness out of which you come.

  So much for “where I fly”: but when

  I strike, and clutch in claw the brain—

  Erebus, to such brain, will seem

  The thin blue dusk of pleasant dream.

  If it should rain—(the sneezy moon

  Said: Rain)—then I shall hear it soon

  From shingles into gutters fall . . .

  And know, of what concerns me, all:

  The garden will be wet till noon—

  I may not walk—my temper leans

  To myths and legends—through the beans

  Till they are dried—lest I should spread

  Diseases they have never had.

  I hear the rain: it comes down straight.

  Now I can sleep, I need not wait

  To close the windows anywhere.

  Tomorrow, it may be, I might

  Do things to set the whole world right.

  There’s nothing I can do tonight.

  The Parsi Woman

  Beautiful Parsi woman in your pale silk veil

  With the gold border, why do you watch the sky?

  The sky is thick and cloudy with the bold strong wings

  Of the vulture, that shall tear your breast and thigh,

  On the tall Tower of Silence where you at length must lie.

  Ah, but have not I,

  I too at the end of the northern May

  When the pasture slope was pink with the wild azalea

  And fragrant with its breath,