Collected Poems

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

  Early, in his own tongue, he knows;

  And though with arms or bows or a dipped thorn

  Blown through a tube, he fights—the brisk

  Rattle of shot he is not slow to tell

  From the sound of ripe seed bursting from a poddy shell;

  And he whom, all his life, life has abused

  Yet knows if he be justly or unjustly used.

  I know these elms, this beautiful doorway: here

  I am at home, if anywhere.

  A natural fondness, an affection which need never be said,

  Rises from the wooden sidewalks warm as the smell of

  new-baked bread

  From a neighbour’s kitchen. It is dusk. The sun goes down.

  Sparsely strung along the street the thrifty lights appear.

  It is pleasant. It is good.

  I am very well-known here; here I am understood.

  I can walk along the street, or turn into a path unlighted, with-out fear

  Of poisonous snakes, or of any face in town.

  Tall elms, my roots go down

  As deep as yours into this soil, yes, quite as deep.

  And I hear the rocking of my cradle. And I must not sleep.

  Not for a nation; not for a little town,

  Where, when the sun goes down, you may sit without fear

  On the front porch, just out of reach of the arc-light, rocking,

  With supper ready, wearing a pale new dress, and your baby

  near

  In its crib, and your husband due to be home by the next

  trolley that you hear bumping into Elm Street—no:

  But for a dream that was dreamt an elm-tree’s life ago—

  And longer, yes, much longer, and what I mean you know.

  For the dream, for the plan, for the freedom of man as it was

  meant

  To be;

  Not for the structure set up so lustily, by rule of thumb

  And over-night, bound to become

  Loose, lop-sided, out of plumb,

  But for the dream, for the plan, for the freedom of man as it

  was meant

  To be

  By men with more vision, more wisdom, more purpose, more

  brains

  Than we,

  (Possibly, possibly)

  Men with more courage, men more unselfish, more intent

  Than we, upon their dreams, upon their dream of Freedom,—

  Freedom not alone

  For oneself, but for all, wherever the word is known,

  In whatever tongue, or the longing in whatever spirit—

  Men with more honour. (That remains

  To be seen! That we shall see!)

  Possibly. Possibly.

  And if still these truths be held to be

  Self-evident.

  Sonnets

  From Renascence

  i

  Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,—no,

  Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fair

  Than small white single poppies,—I can bear

  Thy beauty; though I bend before thee, though

  From left to right, not knowing where to go,

  I turn my troubled eyes, nor here nor there

  Find any refuge from thee, yet I swear

  So has it been with mist,—with moonlight so.

  Like him who day by day unto his draught

  Of delicate poison adds him one drop more

  Till he may drink unharmed the death of ten,

  Even so, inured to beauty, who have quaffed

  Each hour more deeply than the hour before,

  I drink—and live—what has destroyed some men.

  ii

  Time does not bring relief; you all have lied

  Who told me time would ease me of my pain!

  I miss him in the weeping of the rain;

  I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

  The old snows melt from every mountain-side,

  And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;

  But last year’s bitter loving must remain

  Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.

  There are a hundred places where I fear

  To go,—so with his memory they brim.

  And entering with relief some quiet place

  Where never fell his foot or shone his face

  I say, “There is no memory of him here!”

  And so stand stricken, so remembering him .

  iii

  Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,

  And all the flowers that in the springtime grow;

  And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow

  Rising of the round moon; all throats that sing

  The summer through, and each departing wing,

  And all the nests that the bared branches show;

  And all winds that in any weather blow,

  And all the storms that the four seasons bring.

  You go no more on your exultant feet

  Up paths that only mist and morning knew;

  Or watch the wind, or listen to the beat

  Of a bird’s wings too high in air to view,—

  But you were something more than young and sweet

  And fair,—and the long year remembers you.

  iv

  Not in this chamber only at my birth—

  When the long hours of that mysterious night

  Were over, and the morning was in sight—

  I cried, but in strange places, steppe and firth

  I have not seen, through alien grief and mirth;

  And never shall one room contain me quite

  Who in so many rooms first saw the light,

  Child of all mothers, native of the earth.

  So is no warmth for me at any fire

  Today, when the world’s fire has burned so low;

  I kneel, spending my breath in vain desire,

  At that cold hearth which one time roared so strong:

  And straighten back in weariness, and long

  To gather up my little gods and go.

  v

  If I should learn, in some quite casual way,

  That you were gone, not to return again—

  Read from the back-page of a paper, say,

  Held by a neighbor in a subway train,

  How at the corner of this avenue

  And such a street (so are the papers filled)

  A hurrying man, who happened to be you,

  At noon today had happened to be killed—

  I should not cry aloud—I could not cry

  Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place—

  I should but watch the station lights rush by

  With a more careful interest on my face;

  Or raise my eyes and read with greater care

  Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

  vi

  This door you might not open, and you did;

  So enter now, and see for what slight thing

  You are betrayed. . . . Here is no treasure hid,

  No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring

  The sought-for Truth, no heads of women slain

  For greed like yours, no writhings of distress;

  But only what you see. . . . Look yet again:

  An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.

  Yet this alone out of my life I kept

  Unto myself, lest any know me quite;

  And you did so profane me when you crept

  Unto the threshold of this room tonight

  That I must never more behold your face.

  This now is yours. I seek another place.

  From A Few Figs from Thistles

  vii

  I do but ask that you be always fair,

  That I for ever may continue kind;

  Knowing me what I am, you should not dare

  To lapse from beauty ever, nor seek to bind

  My alterable mood with lesser cords:

 
; Weeping and such soft matters but invite

  To further vagrancy, and bitter words

  Chafe soon to irremediable flight.

  Wherefore I pray you if you love me dearly

  Less dear to hold me than your own bright charms,

  Whence it may fall that until death or nearly

  I shall not move to struggle from your arms;

  Fade if you must; I would but bid you be

  Like the sweet year, doing all things graciously.

  viii

  Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,

  And drag me at your chariot till I die,—

  Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts!—

  Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lie

  Who shout you mighty: thick about my hair,

  Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr,

  Who still am free, unto no querulous care

  A fool, and in no temple worshiper!

  I, that have bared me to your quiver’s fire,

  Lifted my face into its puny rain,

  Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire

  As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain!

  (Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave,

  Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!)

  ix

  I think I should have loved you presently,

  And given in earnest words I flung in jest;

  And lifted honest eyes for you to see,

  And caught your hand against my cheek and breast;

  And all my pretty follies flung aside

  That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,

  Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,

  Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.

  I, that had been to you, had you remained,

  But one more waking from a recurrent dream,

  Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,

  And walk your memory’s halls, austere, supreme,

  A ghost in marble of a girl you knew

  Who would have loved you in a day or two.

  x

  Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!

  Faithless am I save to love’s self alone.

  Were you not lovely I would leave you now:

  After the feet of beauty fly my own.

  Were you not still my hunger’s rarest food,

  And water ever to my wildest thirst,

  I would desert you—think not but I would!—

  And seek another as I sought you first.

  But you are mobile as the veering air,

  And all your charms more changeful than the tide,

  Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:

  I have but to continue at your side.

  So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,

  I am most faithless when I most am true.

  xi

  I shall forget you presently, my dear,

  So make the most of this, your little day,

  Your little month, your little half a year,

  Ere I forget, or die, or move away,

  And we are done forever; by and by

  I shall forget you, as I said, but now,

  If you entreat me with your loveliest lie

  I will protest you with my favourite vow.

  I would indeed that love were longer-lived,

  And oaths were not so brittle as they are,

  But so it is, and nature has contrived

  To struggle on without a break thus far,—

  Whether or not we find what we are seeking

  Is idle, biologically speaking.

  From Second April

  xii

  We talk of taxes, and I call you friend;

  Well, such you are,—but well enough we know

  How thick about us root, how rankly grow

  Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend,

  That flourish through neglect, and soon must send

  Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow

  Our steady senses; how such matters go

  We are aware, and how such matters end.

  Yet shall be told no meagre passion here;

  With lovers such as we forevermore

  Isolde drinks the draught, and Guinevere

  Receives the Table’s ruin through her door,

  Francesca, with the loud surf at her ear,

  Lets fall the coloured book upon the floor.

  xiii

  Into the golden vessel Of great song

  Let us pour all our passion; breast to breast

  Let other lovers lie, in love and rest;

  Not we,—articulate, so, but with the tongue

  Of all the world: the churning blood, the long

  Shuddering quiet, the desperate ho t palms pressed

  Sharply together upon the escaping guest,

  The common soul, unguarded, and grown strong.

  Longing alone is singer to the lute;

  Let still on nettles in the open sigh

  The minstrel, that in slumber is as mute

  As any man, and love be far and high,

  That else forsakes the topmost branch, a fruit

  Found on the ground by every passer-by.

  xiv

  Not with libations, but with shouts and laughter

  We drenched the altars of Love’s sacred grove,

  Shaking to earth green fruits, impatient after

  The launching of the coloured moths of Love.

  Love’s proper myrtle and his mother’s zone

  We bound about our irreligious brows,

  And fettered him with garlands of our own,

  And spread a banquet in his frugal house.

  Not yet the god has spoken; but I fear

  Though we should break our bodies in his flame,

  And pour our blood upon his altar, here

  Henceforward is a grove without a name,

  A pasture to the shaggy goats of Pan,

  Whence flee forever a woman and a man.

  xv

  Only until this cigarette is ended,

  A little moment at the end of all,

  While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,

  And in the firelight to a lance extended,

  Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,

  The broken shadow dances on the wall,

  I will permit my memory to recall

  The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.

  And then adieu,—farewell!—the dream is done.

  Yours is a face of which I can forget

  The colour and the features, every one,

  The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;

  But in your day this moment is the sun

  Upon a hill, after the sun has set.

  xvi

  Once more into my arid days like dew,

  Like wind from an oasis, or the sound

  Of cold sweet water bubbling underground,

  A treacherous messenger, the thought of you

  Comes to destroy me; once more I renew

  Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found

  Long since to be but just one other mound

  Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.

  And once again, and wiser in no wise,

  I chase your coloured phantom on the air,

  And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise

  And stumble pitifully on to where,

  Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes,

  Once more I clasp,—and there is nothing there.

  xvii

  No rose that in a garden ever grew,

  In Homer’s or in Omar’s or in mine,

  Though buried under centuries of fine

  Dead dust of roses, shut from sun and dew

  Forever, and forever lost from view,

  But must again in fragrance rich as wine

  The grey aisles of the air incarnadine

  When the old summers surge into a new.

  Thus when I swear, “I love with all my he
art,”

  ’Tis with the heart of Lilith that I swear,

  ’Tis with the love of Lesbia and Lucrece;

  And thus as well my love must lose some part

  Of what it is, had Helen been less fair,

  Or perished young, or stayed at home in Greece.

  xviii

  When I too long have looked upon your face,

  Wherein for me a brightness unobscured

  Save by the mists of brightness has its place,

  And terrible beauty not to be endured,

  I turn away reluctant from your light,

  And stand irresolute, a mind undone,

  A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight

  From having looked too long upon the sun.

  Then is my daily life a narrow room

  In which a little while, uncertainly,

  Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,

  Among familiar things grown strange to me

  Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,

  Till I become accustomed to the dark.

  xix

  And you as well must die, beloved dust,

  And all your beauty stand you in no stead;

  This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,

  This body of flame and steel, before the gust

  Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,

  Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead

  Than the first leaf that fell,—this wonder fled,

  Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.

  Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.

  In spite of all my love, you will arise

  Upon that day and wander down the air

  Obscurely as the unattended flower,

  It mattering not how beautiful you were,

  Or how beloved above all else that dies.

  xx

  Let you not say of me when I am old,

  In pretty worship of my withered hands

  Forgetting who I am, and how the sands

  Of such a life as mine run red and gold

  Even to the ultimate sifting dust, “Behold,

  Here walketh passionless age!”—for there expands

  A curious superstition in these lands,

  And by its leave some weightless tales are told.

  In me no lenten wicks watch out the night;