Collected Poems

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

  The barking of a fox has bought us all;

  We save our skins a craven hour or two.—

  While Peter warms him in the servants’ hall

  The thorns are platted and the cock crows twice.

  cxxxiii

  Count them unclean, these tears that turn no mill,

  This salty flux of sorrow from the heart;

  Count them unclean, and grant me one day still

  To weep, in an avoided room apart.

  I shall come forth at length with reddened lid

  Transparent, and thick mouth, and take the

  plough . . .

  That other men may hope, as I once did;

  That other men may weep, as I do now.

  I am beside you, I am at your back

  Firing our bridges, I am in your van;

  I share your march, your hunger; all I lack

  Is the sure song I cannot sing, you can.

  You think we build a world; I think we leave

  Only these tools, wherewith to strain and grieve.

  cxxxiv

  Three Sonnets in Tetrameter

  I

  See how these masses mill and swarm

  And troop and muster and assail:

  God! —We could keep this planet warm

  By friction, if the sun should fail.

  Mercury, Saturn, Venus, Mars:

  If no prow cuts your arid seas,

  Then in your weightless air no wars

  Explode with such catastrophes

  As rock our planet all but loose

  From its frayed mooring to the sun.

  Law will not sanction such abuse

  Forever; when the mischief’s done,

  Planets, rejoice, on which at night

  Rains but the twelve-ton meteorite.

  cxxxv

  II

  His stalk the dark delphinium

  Unthorned into the tending hand

  Releases . . . yet that hour will come . . .

  And must, in such a spiny land.

  The silky, powdery mignonette

  Before these gathering dews are gone

  May pierce me—doe s the rose regret

  The day she did her armour on?

  In that the foul supplants the fair,

  The coarse defeats the twice-refined,

  Is food for thought, but not despair:

  All will be easier when the mind

  To meet the brutal age has grown

  An iron cortex of its own .

  cxxxvi

  III

  No further from me than my hand

  Is China that I loved so well;

  Love does not help to understand

  The logic of the bursting shell.

  Perfect in dream above me yet

  Shines the white cone Of Fuji-San;

  I wake in fear, and weep and sweat . . .

  Weep for Yoshida, for Japan.

  Logic alone, all love laid by,

  Must calm this crazed and plunging star:

  Sorrowful news for such as I,

  Who hoped—wit h men just as they are,

  Sinful and loving—to secure

  A human peace that might endure.

  cxxxvii

  Upon this age, that never speaks its mind,

  This furtive age, this age endowed with power

  To wake the moon with footsteps, fit an oar

  Into the rowlocks Of the wind, and find

  What swims before his prow, what swirls behind—

  Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,

  Rains from the sky a meteoric shower

  Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.

  Wisdom enough to leech us Of our ill

  Is daily spun; but there exists no loo m

  To weave it into fabric; undefiled

  Proceeds pure Science, and has her say; but still

  Upon this world from the collective womb

  Is spewed all day the red triumphant child.

  CXXXViii

  My earnestness, which might at first offend,

  Forgive me, for the duty it implies:

  I am the convoy to the cloudy end

  Of a most bright and regal enterprise;

  Which under angry constellations, ill-Mounted and under-rationed and unspurred,

  Set forth to find if any country still

  Might do obeisance to an honest word.

  Duped and delivered up to rascals; bound

  And bleeding, and his mouth stuffed; on his knees;

  Robbed and imprisoned; and adjudged unsound;

  I have beheld my master, if you please.

  Forgive my earnestness, who at his side

  Received his swift instructions, till he died.

  From Make Bright the Arrows

  cxxxix

  I must not die of pity; I must live;

  Grow strong, not sicken; eat, digest my food ,

  That it may build me, and in doing good

  To blood and bone, broaden the sensitive

  Fastidious pale perception: we contrive

  Lean comfort for the starving, who intrude

  Upon them with our pots of pity; brewed

  From stronger meat must be the broth we give.

  Blue, bright September day, with here and there

  On the green hills a maple turning red,

  And white clouds racing in the windy air!—

  If I would help the weak, I must be fed

  In wit and purpose, pour away despair

  And rinse the cup, eat happiness like bread.

  cxl

  How innocent of me and my dark pain

  In the clear east, unclouded save for one

  Flamingo-coloured feather, combed and spun

  Into fine spirals, with ephemeral stain

  To dye the morning rose after the rain,

  Rises the simple and majestic sun,

  His azure course, well-known and often-run

  With patient brightness to pursue again.

  The gods are patient; they are slaves of Time

  No less than we, and longer, at whose call

  Must Phoebus rise and mount his dewy car,

  And lift the reins and start the ancient climb;

  Could we learn patience, though day-creatures all,

  Our day should see us godlier than we are.

  From Wine from These Grapes

  cxli

  Epitaph for the Race of Man

  I

  Before this cooling planet shall be cold,

  Long, long before the music of the Lyre,

  Like the faint roar of distant breakers rolled

  On reefs unseen, when wind and flood conspire

  To drive the ship inshore—long, long, I say,

  Before this ominous humming hits the ear,

  Earth will have come upon a stiller day,

  Man and his engines be no longer here.

  High on his naked rock the mountain sheep

  Will stand alone against the final sky,

  Drinking a wind of danger new and deep,

  Staring on Vega with a piercing eye,

  And gather up his slender hooves and leap

  From crag to crag down Chaos, and so go by.

  cxlii

  II

  When Death was young and bleaching bones were few,

  A moving hill against the risen day

  The dinosaur at morning made his way,

  And dropped his dung upon the blazing dew;

  Trees with no name that now are agate grew

  Lushly beside him in the steamy clay;

  He woke and hungered, rose and stalked his prey,

  And slept contented, in a world he knew.

  In punctual season, with the race in mind,

  His consort held aside her heavy tail,

  And took the seed; and heard the seed confined

  Roar in her womb; and made a nest to hold

  A hatched-out conqueror . . . but to no avail:r />
  The veined and fertile eggs are long since cold.

  cxliii

  III

  Cretaceous bird, your giant claw no lime

  From bark of holly bruised or mistletoe

  Could have arrested, could have held you so

  Through fifty million years Of jostling time;

  Yet cradled with you in the catholic slime

  Of the young ocean’s tepid lapse and flow

  Slumbered an agent, weak in embryo,

  Should grip you straitly, in its sinewy prime.

  What bright collision in the zodiac brews,

  What mischief dimples at the planet’s core

  For shark, for python, for the dove that coos

  Under the leaves?—what frosty fate’s in store

  For the warm blood of man,—man, out of ooze

  But lately crawled, and climbing up the shore?

  cxliv

  IV

  O Earth, unhappy planet born to die,

  Might I your scribe and your confessor be,

  What wonders must you not relate to me

  Of Man, who when his destiny was high

  Strode like the sun into the middle sky

  And shone an hour, and who so bright as he,

  And like the sun went down into the sea,

  Leaving no spark to be remembered by.

  But no; you have not learned in all these years

  To tell the leopard and the newt apart;

  Man, with his singular laughter, his droll tears,

  His engines and his conscience and his art,

  Made but a simple sound upon your ears:

  The patient beating of the animal heart.

  cxlv

  v

  When Man is gone and only gods remain

  To stride the world, their mighty bodies hung

  With golden shields, and golden curls outflung

  Above their childish foreheads; when the plain

  Round skull of Man is lifted and again

  Abandoned by the ebbing wave, among

  The sand and pebbles of the beach,—what tongue

  Will tell the marvel Of the human brain?

  Heavy with music once this windy shell,

  Heavy with knowledge of the clustered stars;

  The one-time tenant of this draughty hall

  Himself, in learned pamphlet, did foretell,

  After some aeons of study jarred by wars,

  This toothy gourd, this head emptied of all.

  cxlvi

  VI

  See where Capella with her golden kids

  Grazes the slope between the east and north:

  Thus when the builders of the pyramids

  Flung down their tools at nightfall and poured forth

  Homeward to supper and a poor man’s bed,

  Shortening the road with friendly jest and slur,

  The risen She-Goat showing blue and red

  Climbed the clear dusk, and three stars followed her.

  Safe in their linen and their spices lie

  The kings of Egypt; even as long ago

  Under these constellations, with long eye

  And scented limbs they slept, and feared no foe.

  Their will was law; their will was not to die:

  And so they had their way; or nearly so.

  cxlvii

  VI I

  He heard the coughing tiger in the night

  Push at his door; close by his quiet head

  About the wattled cabin the soft tread

  Of heavy feet he followed, and the slight

  Sigh of the long banana leaves; in sight

  At last and leaning westward overhead

  The Centaur and the Cross now heralded

  The sun, far off but marching, bringing light.

  What time the Centaur and the Cross were spent,

  Night and the beast retired into the hill,

  Whereat serene and undevoured he lay,

  And dozed and stretched and listened and lay still,

  Breathing into his body with content

  The temperate dawn before the tropic day.

  cxlviii

  VII I

  Observe how Miyanoshita cracked in two

  And slid into the valley; he that stood

  Grinning with terror in the bamboo wood

  Saw the earth heave and thrust its bowels through

  The hill, and his own kitchen slide from view,

  Spilling the warm bowl of his humble food

  Into the lap of horror; mark how lewd

  This cluttered gulf,—’twas here his paddy grew.

  Dread and dismay have not encompassed him;

  The calm sun sets; unhurried and aloof

  Into the riven village falls the rain;

  Days pass; the ashes cool; he builds again

  His paper house upon oblivion’s brim,

  And plants the purple iris in its roof .

  cxlix

  IX

  He woke in terror to a sky more bright

  Than middle day; he heard the sick earth groan,

  And ran to see the lazy-smoking cone

  Of the fire-mountain, friendly to his sight

  As his wife’s hand, gone strange and full of fright;

  Over his fleeing shoulder it was shown

  Rolling its pitchy lake Of scalding stone

  Upon his house that had no feet for flight.

  Where did he weep? Where did he sit him down

  And sorrow, with his head between his knees?

  Where said the Race of Man, “Here let me drown”?

  “Here let me die of hunger”?—“let me freeze”?

  By nightfall he has built another town:

  This boiling pot, this clearing in the trees.

  cl

  x

  The broken dike, the levee washed away,

  The good fields flooded and the cattle drowned,

  Estranged and treacherous all the faithful ground,

  And nothing left but floating disarray

  Of tree and home uprooted,—was this the day

  Man dropped upon his shadow without a sound

  And died, having laboured well and having found

  His burden heavier than a quilt of clay?

  No, no. I saw him when the sun had set

  In water, leaning on his single oar

  Above his garden faintly glimmering yet . . .

  There bulked the plough, here washed the updrifted

  weeds . . .

  And scull across his roof and make for shore,

  With twisted face and pocket full of seeds.

  cli

  XI

  Sweeter was loss than silver coins to spend,

  Sweeter was famine than the belly filled;

  Better than blood in the vein was the blood spilled;

  Better than corn and healthy flocks to tend

  And a tight roof and acres without end

  Was the barn burned and the mild creatures killed,

  And the back aging fast, and all to build:

  For then it was, his neighbour was his friend.

  Then for a moment the averted eye

  Was turned upon him with benignant beam,

  Defiance faltered, and derision slept;

  He saw as in a not unhappy dream

  The kindly heads against the horrid sky,

  And scowled, and cleared his throat and spat, and

  wept.

  clii

  XII

  Now forth to meadow as the farmer goes

  With shining buckets to the milking-ground,

  He meets the black ant hurrying from his mound

  To milk the aphis pastured on the rose;

  But no good-morrow, as you might suppose,

  No nod of greeting, no perfunctory sound

  Passes between them; no occasion’s found

  For gossip as to how the fodder grows.

  In chilly autumn on the hardening road

/>   They meet again, driving their flocks to stall,

  Two herdsmen, each with winter for a goad;

  They meet and pass, and never a word at all

  Gives one to t’other. On the quaint abode

  Of each, the evening and the first snow fall.

  cliii

  XII I

  His heatless room the watcher of the stars

  Nightly inhabits when the night is clear;

  Propping his mattress on the turning sphere,

  Saturn his rings or Jupiter his bars

  He follows, or the fleeing moons of Mars,

  Till from his ticking lens they disappear. . .

  Whereat he sighs, and yawns, and on his ear

  The busy chirp Of Earth remotely jars.

  Peace at the void’s heart through the wordless night,

  A lamb cropping the awful grasses, grazed;

  Earthward the trouble lies, where strikes his light

  At dawn industrious Man, and unamazed

  Goes forth to plough, flinging a ribald stone

  At all endeavour alien to his own .

  cliv

  XIV

  Him not the golden fang of furious heaven,

  Nor whirling Aeolus on his awful wheel,

  Nor foggy specter ramming the swift keel,

  Nor flood, nor earthquake, nor the red tongue even

  Of fire, disaster’s dog—him, him bereaven

  Of all save the heart’s knocking, and to feel

  The air upon his face: not the great heel

  Of headless Force into the dust has driven.

  These sunken cities, tier on tier, bespeak

  How ever from the ashes with proud beak

  And shining feathers did the phoenix rise,

  And sail, and send the vulture from the skies . . .

  That in the end returned; for Man was weak

  Before the unkindness in his brother’s eyes.

  clv

  XV

  Now sets his foot upon the eastern sill

  Aldebaran, swiftly rising, mounting high,

  And tracks the Pleiads down the crowded sky,

  And drives his wedge into the western hill;

  Now for the void sets forth, and further still,