Collected Poems

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

  I spoke to see my breath upon the air:

  If you walk east at daybreak from the town

  To the cliff’s foot, by climbing steadily

  You cling at noon whence there is no way down

  But to go toppling backward to the sea.

  And not for birds nor birds’-eggs, so they say,

  But for a flower that in these fissures grows,

  Forms have been seen to move throughout the day

  Skyward; but what its name is no one knows.

  ’Tis said you find beside them on the sand

  This flower, relinquished by the broken hand.

  cxii

  XLII

  O ailing Love, compose your struggling wing!

  Confess you mortal; be content to die.

  How better dead, than be this awkward thing

  Dragging in dust its feathers of the sky;

  Hitching and rearing, plunging beak to loam,

  Upturned, disheveled, uttering a weak sound

  Less proud than Of the gull that rakes the foam,

  Less kind than of the hawk that scours the ground.

  While yet your awful beauty, even at bay,

  Beats off the impious eye, the outstretched hand,

  And what your hue or fashion none can say,

  Vanish, be fled, leave me a wingless land . . .

  Save where one moment down the quiet tide

  Fades a white swan, with a black swan beside.

  cxii

  XLIII

  Summer, be seen no more within this wood;

  Nor you, red Autumn, down its paths appear;

  Let no more the false mitrewort intrude

  Nor the dwarf cornel nor the gentian here;

  You too be absent, unavailing Spring,

  Nor let those thrushes that with pain conspire

  From out this wood their wild arpeggios fling,

  Shaking the nerves with memory and desire.

  Only that season which is no man’s friend,

  You, surly Winter, in this wood be found;

  Freeze up the year; with sleet these branches bend

  Though rasps the locust in the fields around.

  Now darken, sky! Now shrieking blizzard, blow!—

  Farewell, sweet bank; be blotted out with snow.

  cxxxiii

  XLIV

  If to be left were to be left alone,

  And lock the door and find one’s self again—

  Drag forth and dust Penates of one’s own

  That in a corner all too long have lain;

  Read Brahms, read Chaucer, set the chessmen out

  In classic problem, stretch the shrunken mind

  Back to its stature on the rack of thought—

  Loss might be said to leave its boon behind.

  But fruitless conference and the interchange

  With callow wits of bearded cons and pros

  Enlist the neutral daylight, and derange

  A will too sick to battle for repose.

  Neither with you nor with myself, I spend

  Loud days that have no meaning and no end.

  cxiv

  XLV

  I know my mind and I have made my choice;

  Not from your temper does my doom depend;

  Love me or love me not, you have no voice

  In this, which is my portion to the end.

  Your presence and your favours, the full part

  That you could give, you now can take away:

  What lies between your beauty and my heart

  Not even you can trouble or betray.

  Mistake me not—unto my inmost core

  I do desire your kiss upon my mouth;

  They have not craved a cup Of water more

  That bleach upon the deserts of the south;

  Here might you bless me; what you cannot do

  Is bow me down, who have been loved by you.

  cxv

  XLVI

  Even in the moment of our earliest kiss,

  When sighed the straitened bud into the flower,

  Sat the dry seed of most unwelcome this;

  And that I knew, though not the day and hour.

  Too season-wise am I, being country-bred,

  To tilt at autumn or defy the frost:

  Snuffing the chill even as my fathers did,

  I say with them, “What’s out tonight is lost.”

  I only hoped, with the mild hope of all

  Who watch the leaf take shape upon the tree,

  A fairer summer and a later fall

  Than in these parts a man is apt to see,

  And sunny clusters ripened for the wine:

  I tell you this across the blackened vine.

  cxvi

  XLVII

  Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;

  In my own way, and with my full consent.

  Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely

  Went to their deaths more proud than this one

  Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping

  I will confess; but that’s permitted me;

  Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping

  Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.

  If I had loved you less or played you slyly

  I might have held you for a summer more,

  But at the cost of words I value highly,

  And no such summer as the one before.

  Should I outlive this anguish—an d men do—

  I shall have only good to say of you.

  cxxxvii

  XLVIII

  Now by the path I climbed, I journey back.

  The oaks have grown; I have been long away.

  Taking with me your memory and your lack

  I now descend into a milder day;

  Stripped of your love, unburdened Of my hope,

  Descend the path I mounted from the plain;

  Yet steeper than I fancied seems the slope

  And stonier, now that I go down again.

  Warm falls the dusk; the clanking of a bell

  Faintly ascends upon this heavier air;

  I do recall those grassy pastures well:

  In early spring they drove the cattle there.

  And close at hand should be a shelter, too,

  From which the mountain peaks are not in view.

  cxviii

  XLIX

  There is a well into whose bottomless eye,

  Though I were flayed, I dare not lean and look,

  Sweet once with mountain water, now gone dry,

  Miraculously abandoned by the brook

  Wherewith for years miraculously fed

  It kept a constant level cold and bright,

  Though summer parched the rivers in their bed;

  Withdrawn these waters, vanished overnight.

  There is a word I dare not speak again,

  A face I never again must call to mind;

  I was not craven ever nor blenched at pain,

  But pain to such degree and of such kind

  As I must suffer if I think of you,

  Not in my senses will I undergo.

  cxix

  L

  The heart once broken is a heart no more,

  And is absolved from all a heart must be;

  All that it signed or chartered heretofore

  Is cancelled now, the bankrupt heart is free;

  So much of duty as you may require

  Of shards and dust, this and no more of pain,

  This and no more of hope, remorse, desire,

  The heart once broken need support again.

  How simple ’tis, and what a little sound

  It makes in breaking, let the world attest:

  It struggles, and it fails; the world goes round,

  And the moon follows it. Heart in my breast,

  ’Tis half a year now since you broke in two;

  The world’s forgotten well, if the world knew.

  cxx

&nbs
p; LI

  If in the years to come you should recall,

  When faint at heart or fallen on hungry days,

  Or full of griefs and little if at all

  From them distracted by delights or praise;

  When failing powers or good opinion lost

  Have bowed your neck, should you recall to mind

  How of all men I honoured you the most,

  Holding you noblest among mortal-kind:

  Might not my love—although the curving blade

  From whose wide mowing none may hope to hide,

  Me long ago below the frosts had laid—

  Restore you somewhat to your former pride?

  Indeed I think this memory, even then,

  Must raise you high among the run of men.

  cxxi

  LII

  Oh, sleep forever in the Latmian cave,

  Mortal Endymion, darling of the Moon!

  Her silver garments by the senseless wave

  Shouldered and dropped and on the shingle strewn,

  Her fluttering hand against her forehead pressed,

  Her scattered looks that trouble all the sky,

  Her rapid footsteps running down the west—

  Of all her altered state, oblivious lie!

  Whom earthen you, by deathless lips adored,

  Wild-eye d and stammering to the grasses thrust,

  And deep into her crystal body poured

  The ho t and sorrowful sweetness of the dust:

  WhereOf she wanders mad, being all unfit

  For mortal love, that might not die of it .

  FINIS

  From Wine from These Grapes

  cxxii

  Two Sonnets in Memory

  (NICOL A SACCO —BARTOLOME O VANZETTI )

  Executed August 23, 1927

  As men have loved their lovers in times past

  And sung their wit, their virtue and their grace,

  So have we loved sweet Justice to the last,

  Who now lies here in an unseemly place.

  The child will quit the cradle and grow wise

  And stare on beauty till his senses drown;

  Yet shall be seen no more by mortal eyes

  Such beauty as here walked and here went down.

  Like birds that hear the winter crying plain

  Her courtiers leave to seek the clement south;

  Many have praised her, we alone remain

  To break a fist against the lying mouth

  Of any man who says this was not so:

  Though she be dead now, as indeed we know.

  cxxxiii

  II

  Where can the heart be hidden in the ground

  And be at peace, and be at peace forever,

  Under the world, untroubled by the sound

  Of mortal tears, that cease from pouring never?

  Well for the heart, by stern compassion harried,

  If death be deeper than the churchmen say,—

  Gone from this world indeed what’s graveward carried,

  And laid to rest indeed what’s laid away.

  Anguish enough while yet the indignant breather

  Have blood to spurt upon the oppressor’s hand;

  Who would eternal be, and hang in ether

  A stuffless ghost above his struggling land,

  Retching in vain to render up the groan

  That is not there, being aching dust’s alone?

  From Huntsman, What Quarry?

  cxxiv

  Enormous moon, that rise behind these hills

  Heavy and yellow in a sky unstarred

  And pale, your girth by purple fillets barred

  Of drifting cloud, that as the cool sky fills

  With planets and the brighter stars, distills

  To thinnest vapour and floats valley-ward,

  You flood with radiance all this cluttered yard,

  The sagging fence, the chipping window sills.

  Grateful at heart as if for my delight

  You rose, I watch you through a mist of tears,

  Thinking how man, who gags upon despair,

  Salting his hunger with the sweat of fright

  Has fed on cold indifference all these years,

  Calling it kindness, calling it God’s care.

  cxxv

  Now let the mouth Of wailing for a time

  Be shut, ye happy mourners; and return

  To the marked door, the ribbon and the fern,

  Without a tear. The good man in his prime,

  The pretty child, the Gone—from a fair clime

  Above the ashes Of the solemn urn

  Behold you; wherefore, then, these hearts that burn

  With hot remorse, these cheeks the tears begrime?

  Grief that is grief and worthy Of that word

  Is ours alone for whom no hope can be

  That the loved eyes look down and understand.

  Ye true believers, trusters in the Lord,

  Today bereft, tomorrow hand in hand,

  Think ye not shame to show your tears to me?

  CXXVl

  Thou famished grave, I will not fill thee yet,

  Roar though thou dost, I am too happy here;

  Gnaw thine own sides, fast on; I have no fear

  Of thy dark project, but my heart is set

  On living—I have heroes to beget

  Before I die; I will not come anear

  Thy dismal jaws for many a splendid year;

  Till I be old, I aim not to be eat.

  I cannot starve thee out: I am thy prey

  And thou shalt have me; but I dare defend

  That I can stave thee off; and I dare say,

  What with the life I lead, the force I spend,

  I’ll be but bones and jewels on that day,

  And leave thee hungry even in the end.

  cxxxvii

  Now that the west is washed of clouds and clear,

  The sun gone under and his beams laid by,

  You, that require a quarter of the sky

  To shine alone in: prick the dusk, appear,

  Beautiful Venus! The dense atmosphere

  Cannot diffuse your rays, you blaze so high,

  Lighting with loveliness a crisp and dry

  Cold evening in the autumn of the year.

  The pilot standing by his broken plane

  In the unheard-of mountains, looks on you,

  And warms his heart a moment at your light . . .

  Benignant planet, sweet, familiar sight . . .

  Thinking he may be found, he may again

  See home, breaks the stale buttered crust in two.

  cxxviii

  I too beneath your moon, almighty Sex,

  Go forth at nightfall crying like a cat,

  Leaving the lofty tower I laboured at

  For birds to foul and boys and girls to vex

  With tittering chalk; and you, and the long necks

  Of neighbours sitting where their mothers sat

  Are well aware of shadowy this and that

  In me, that’s neither noble nor complex.

  Such as I am, however, I have brought

  To what it is, this tower; it is my own;

  Though it was reared To Beauty, it was wrought

  From what I had to build with : honest bone

  Is there, and anguish; pride; and burning thought;

  And lust is there, and nights not spent alone.

  cxxix

  When did I ever deny, though this was fleeting,

  That this was love? When did I ever, I say,

  With iron thumb put out the eyes of day

  In this cold world where charity lies bleating

  Under a thorn, and none to give him greeting,

  And all that lights endeavour on its way

  Is the teased lamp of loving, the torn ray

  Of the least kind, the most clandestine meeting?

  As God’s my judge, I do cry holy, holy,

  Up
on the name of love however brief,

  For want of whose ill-trimmed, aspiring wick

  More days than one I have gone forward slowly

  In utter dark, scuffling the drifted leaf,

  Tapping the road before me with a stick.

  cxxx

  Be sure my coming was a sharp offense

  And trouble to my mother in her bed;

  And harsh to me must be my going hence,

  Though I were old and spent and better dead;

  Between the awful spears of birth and death

  I run a grassy gauntlet in the sun;

  And curdled in me is my central pith,

  Remembering there is dying to be done.

  O Life, my little day, at what a cost

  Have you been purchased! What a bargain’s here!

  (And yet, thou canny Lender, thou hast lost:

  thumb thy fat book until my debt appear:

  So . . . art thou stuck? . . . thou canst not strike that

  through

  For the small dying that a man can do! )

  CXXXl

  Not only love plus awful grief,

  The ardent and consuming pain

  Of all who loved and who remain

  To tend alone the buried brief

  Eternal, propping laurel-leaf

  And frozen rose above the slain,—

  But pity lest they die again

  Makes of the mind an iron sheaf

  Of bundled memories. Ah, bright ghost,

  Who shadow all I have and do,

  Be gracious in your turn, be gone!

  Suffice it that I loved you most.

  I would be rid of even you,

  And see the world I look upon.

  cxxxii

  Czecho-slovakia

  If there were balm in Gilead, I would go

  To Gilead for your wounds, unhappy land,

  Gather you balsam there, and with this hand,

  Made deft by pity, cleanse and bind and sew

  And drench with healing, that your strength might

  grow,

  (Though love be outlawed, kindness contraband)

  And you, O proud and felled, again might stand;

  But where to look for balm, I do not know.

  The oils and herbs Of mercy are so few;

  Honour’s for sale; allegiance has its price;