Collected Poems

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am the booth where Folly holds her fair;

  Impious no less in ruin than in strength,

  When I lie crumbled to the earth at length,

  Let you not say, “Upon this reverend site

  The righteous groaned and beat their breasts

  in prayer.”

  xxi

  Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this:

  How in the years to come unscrupulous Time,

  More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss,

  And make you old, and leave me in my prime?

  How you and I, who scale together yet

  A little while the sweet, immortal height

  No pilgrim may remember or forget,

  As sure as the world turns, some granite night

  Shall lie awake and know the gracious flame

  Gone out forever on the mutual stone;

  And call to mind that on the day you came

  I was a child, and you a hero grown?—

  And the night pass, and the strange morning break

  Upon our anguish for each other’s sake!

  xxii

  As to some lovely temple, tenantless

  Long since, that once was sweet with shivering brass,

  Knowing well its altars ruined and the grass

  Grown up between the stones, yet from excess

  Of grief hard driven, or great loneliness,

  The worshiper returns, and those who pass

  Marvel him crying on a name that was,—

  So is it now with me in my distress.

  Your body was a temple to Delight;

  Cold are its ashes whence the breath is fled;

  Yet here one time your spirit was wont to move;

  Here might I hope to find you day or night;

  And here I come to look for you, my love,

  Even now, foolishly, knowing you are dead.

  xxiii

  Cherish you then the hope I shall forget

  At length, my lord, Pieria?—put away

  For your so passing sake, this mouth of clay,

  These mortal bones against my body set,

  For all the puny fever and frail sweat

  Of human love,—renounce for these, I say,

  The Singing Mountain’s memory, and betray

  The silent lyre that hangs upon me yet? Ah, but indeed, some day shall you awake,

  Rather, from dreams Of me, that at your side

  So many nights, a lover and a bride,

  But stern in my soul’s chastity, have lain,

  To walk the world forever for my sake,

  And in each chamber find me gone again!

  From The Harp-Weaver

  xxiv

  When you, chat at this moment are to me

  Dearer than words on paper, shall depart,

  And be no more the warder of my heart,

  Whereof again myself shall hold the key;

  And be no more—what now you seem to be—

  The sun, from which all excellences start

  In a round nimbus, nor a broken dart

  Of moonlight, even, splintered on the sea;

  I shall remember only of this hour—

  And weep somewhat, as now you see me weep—

  The pathos of your love, that, like a flower,

  Fearful of death yet amorous of sleep,

  Droops for a moment and beholds, dismayed,

  The wind whereon its petals shall be laid.

  xxv

  That Love at length should find me out and bring

  This fierce and trivial brow unto the dust,

  Is, after all, I must confess, but just;

  There is a subtle beauty in this thing,

  A wry perfection; wherefore now let sing

  All voices how into my throat is thrust,

  Unwelcome as Death’s own, Love’s bitter crust,

  All criers proclaim it, and all steeples ring.

  This being done, there let the matter rest.

  What more remains is neither here nor there.

  That you requite me not is plain to see;

  Myself your slave herein have I confessed:

  Thus far, indeed, the world may mock at me;

  But if I suffer, it is my own affair.

  xxvi

  Love is not blind. I see with single eye

  Your ugliness and other women’s grace.

  I know the imperfection of your face,—

  The eyes too wide apart, the brow too high

  For beauty. Learned from earliest youth am I

  In loveliness, and cannot so erase

  Its letters from my mind, that I may trace

  You faultless, I must love until I die.

  More subtle is the sovereignty Of love:

  So am I caught that when I say, “Not fair,”

  ’Tis but as if I said, “Not here—not there—

  Not risen—not writing letters.” Well I know

  What is this beauty men are babbling of;

  I wonder only why they prize it so.

  xxvii

  I know I am but summer to your heart,

  And not the full four seasons of the year;

  And you must welcome from another part

  Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.

  No gracious weight Of golden fruits to sell

  Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;

  And I have loved you all too long and well

  To carry still the high sweet breast Of Spring.

  Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,

  I must be gone, steal fort h with silent drums,

  That you may hail anew the bird and rose

  When I come back to you, as summer comes.

  Else will you seek, at some not distant time,

  Even your summer in another clime.

  xxviii

  I pray you if you love me, bear my joy

  A little while, or let me weep your tears;

  I, too, have seen the quavering Fate destroy

  Your destiny’s bright spinning—the dull shears

  Meeting not neatly, chewing at the thread,—

  Nor can you well be less aware how fine,

  How staunch as wire, and how unwarranted

  Endures the golden fortune that is mine.

  I pray you for this day at least, my dear,

  Fare by my side, that journey in the sun;

  Else must I turn me from the blossoming year

  And walk in grief the way that you have gone.

  Let us go forth together to the spring:

  Love must be this, if it be anything.

  xxix

  Pity me not because the light of day

  At close Of day no longer walks the sky;

  Pity me not for beauties passed away

  From field and thicket as the year goes by;

  Pity me not the waning Of the moon ,

  Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,

  Nor that a man’s desire is hushed so soon,

  And you no longer look wit h love on me .

  This have I known always: Love is no more

  Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,

  Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,

  Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales:

  Pity me that the heart is slow to learn

  What the swift min d beholds at every turn .

  xxx

  Sometimes when I am wearied suddenly

  Of all the things that are the outward you,

  And my gaze wanders ere your tale is through

  To webs of my own weaving, or I see

  Abstractedly your hands about your knee

  And wonder why I love you as I do,

  Then I recall, “Yet Sorrow thus he drew”;

  Then I consider, “Pride thus painted he.”

  Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would note

  In me a beauty that was never mine,

  How first you knew me in a book I wrot
e,

  How first you loved me for a written line:

  So are we bound till broken is the throat

  Of Song, and Art no more leads out the Nine .

  xxxi

  Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!

  Give back my book and take my kiss instead.

  Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,

  “What a big book for such a little head!”

  Come, I will show you now my newest hat,

  And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink!

  Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that .

  I never again shall tell you what I think .

  I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;

  You will not catch me reading any more:

  I shall be called a wife to pattern by;

  And some day when you knock and push the door,

  Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,

  I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me.

  xxxii

  Here is a wound that never will heal, I know,

  Being wrought not of a dearness and a death,

  But of a love turned ashes and the breath

  Gone out of beauty; never again will grow

  The grass on that scarred acre, though I sow

  Young seed there yearly and the sky bequeath

  Its friendly weathers down, far underneath

  Shall be such bitterness of an old woe.

  That April should be shattered by a gust,

  That August should be levelled by a rain,

  I can endure, and that the lifted dust

  Of man should settle to the earth again;

  But that a dream can die, will be a thrust

  Between my ribs forever of hot pain.

  xxxiii

  I shall go back again to the bleak shore

  And build a little shanty on the sand,

  In such a way that the extremest band

  Of brittle seaweed will escape my door

  But by a yard or two; and nevermore

  Shall I return to take you by the hand;

  I shall be gone to what I understand,

  And happier than I ever was before.

  The love that stood a moment in your eyes,

  The words that lay a moment on your tongue,

  Are one with all that in a moment dies,

  A little under-said and over-sung.

  But I shall find the sullen rocks and skies

  Unchanged from what they were when I was young.

  xxxiv

  Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find

  The roots of last year’s roses in my breast;

  I am as surely riper in my mind

  As if the fruit stood in the stalls confessed.

  Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will,

  Call me in all things what I was before,

  A Hutterer in the wind, a woman still;

  I tell you I am what I was and more.

  My branches weigh me down, frost cleans the air,

  My sky is black with small birds bearing south;

  Say what you will, confuse me with fine care,

  Put by my word as but an April truth—

  Autumn is no less on me, that a rose

  Hugs the brown bough and sighs before it goes.

  xxxv

  What’s this of death, from you who never will die?

  Think you the wrist that fashioned you in clay,

  The thumb that set the hollow just that way

  In your full throat and lidded the long eye

  So roundly from the forehead, will let lie

  Broken, forgotten, under foot some day

  Your unimpeachable body, and so slay

  The work he most had been remembered by?

  I tell you this: whatever of dust to dust

  Goes down, whatever of ashes may return

  To its essential self in its own season,

  Loveliness such as yours will not be lost,

  But, cast in bronze upon his very urn,

  Make known him Master, and for what good reason.

  xxxvi

  I see so clearly now my similar years

  Repeat each other, shod in rusty black,

  Like one hack following another hack

  In meaningless procession, dry of tears,

  Driven empty, lest the noses sharp as shears

  Of gutter-urchins at a hearse’s back

  Should sniff a man died friendless, and attack

  With silly scorn his deaf triumphant ears;

  I see so clearly how my life must run

  One year behind another year until

  At length these bones that leap into the sun

  Are lowered into the gravel, and lie still,

  I would at times the funeral were done

  And I abandoned on the ultimate hill.

  xxxvii

  Your face is like a chamber where a king

  Dies of his wounds, untended and alone,

  Stifling with courteous gesture the crude moan

  That speaks too loud of mortal perishing,

  Rising on elbow in the dark to sing

  Some rhyme now out of season but well known

  In days when banners in his face were blown

  And every woman had a rose to fling.

  I know that through your eyes which look on me

  Who stand regarding you with pitiful breath,

  You see beyond the moment’s pause, you see

  The sunny sky, the skimming bird beneath,

  And, fronting on your windows hopelessly,

  Black in the noon, the broad estates of Death.

  xxxviii

  The light comes back with Columbine; she brings

  A touch of this, a little touch of that,

  Coloured confetti, and a favour hat,

  Patches, and powder, dolls that work by strings

  And moons that work by switches, all the things

  That please a sick man’s fancy, and a flat

  Spry convalescent kiss, and a small pat

  Upon the pillow,—paper offerings.

  The light goes out with her; the shadows sprawl.

  Where she has left her fragrance like a shawl

  I lie alone and pluck the counterpane,

  Or on a dizzy elbow rise and hark—

  And down like dominoes along the dark

  Her little silly laughter spills again!

  xxxix

  Lord Archer, Death, whom sent you in your stead?

  What faltering prentice fumbled at your bow,

  That now should wander with the insanguine dead

  In whom forever the bright blood must flow?

  Or is it rather that impairing Time

  Renders yourself so random, or so dim?

  Or are you sick of shadows and would climb

  A while to light, a while detaining him?

  For know, this was no mortal youth, to be

  Of you confounded, but a heavenly guest,

  Assuming earthly garb for love of me,

  And hell’s demure attire for love of jest:

  Bringing me asphodel and a dark feather,

  He will return, and we shall laugh together!

  xl

  Loving you less than life, a little less

  Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall

  Or brush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess

  I cannot swear I love you not at all.

  For there is that about you in this light—

  A yellow darkness, sinister of rain—

  Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight

  To dwell on you, and dwell on you again.

  And I am made aware of many a week

  I shall consume, remembering in what way

  Your brown hair grows about your brow and cheek,

  And what divine absurdities you say:

  Till all the world, and I, and surely you,

  Will know I love you, whether or not I do.r />
  xli

  I, being born a woman and distressed

  By all the needs and notions of my kind,

  Am urged by your propinquity to find

  Your person fair, and feel a certain zest

  To bear your body’s weight upon my breast:

  So subtly is the fume of life designed,

  To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,

  And leave me once again undone, possessed.

  Think not for this, however, the poor treason

  Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,

  I shall remember you with love, or season

  My scorn with pity,—let me make it plain:

  I find this frenzy insufficient reason

  For conversation when we meet again.

  xlii

  What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,

  I have forgotten, and what arms have lain

  Under my head till morning; but the rain

  Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh

  Upon the glass and listen for reply,

  And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain

  For unremembered lads that not again

  Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.

  Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,

  Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,

  Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:

  I cannot say what loves have come and gone,

  I only know that summer sang in me

  A little while, that in me sings no more.

  xliii

  Still will I harvest beauty where it grows

  In coloured fungus and the spotted fog

  Surprised on foods forgotten; in ditch and bog

  Filmed brilliant with irregular rainbows

  Of rust and oil, where half a city throws

  Its empty tins; and in some spongy log

  Whence headlong leaps the oozy emerald frog . . . .

  And a black pupil in the green scum shows.

  Her the inhabiter Of divers places

  Surmising at all doors, I push them all.

  Oh, you that fearful of a creaking hinge

  Turn back forevermore with craven faces,

  I tell you Beauty bears an ultra fringe

  Unguessed of you upon her gossamer shawl!