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Title: Poems

Author: Edna St. Vincent Millay

Release date: March 31, 2019 [eBook #59167]

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS ***

Transcriber’s Note

Cover created by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.

Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Poems by

Edna St. Vincent Millay

❦

London

Martin Secker

1923

Printed in Great Britain

London: Martin Secker (Ltd.) 1923

CONTENTS

Section One

Renascence,

13

God’s World,

22

Afternoon on a Hill,

23

Journey,

24

Sorrow,

26

Tavern,

27

Ashes of Life,

28

The Little Ghost,

29

Kin to Sorrow,

31

Three Songs of Shattering,

32

The Shroud,

34

The Dream,

35

Indifference,

36

Witch-wife,

37

Blight,

38

When the Year Grows Old,

40

Unnamed Sonnets, i-v,

42

Sonnet vi (Bluebeard),

47

Section Two

I,

51

II,

51

Recuerdo,

52

Thursday,

53

To the Not Impossible Him,

54

The Singing-Woman from the Wood’s Edge,

55

Humoresque,

58

She is Overheard Singing,

59

The Unexplorer,

61

Grown-up,

62

The Penitent,

63

Daphne,

64

Portrait by a Neighbour,

65

The Merry Maid,

66

To S. M.,

67

The Philosopher,

68

Sonnet—Love, Though for This,

69

Sonnet—I Think I Should Have Loved You,

70

Sonnet—Oh, Think Not I am Faithful,

71

Sonnet—I Shall Forget You Presently,

72

Section Three

Spring,

75

City Trees,

76

The Blue-Flag in the Bog,

77

Eel-Grass,

86

Elegy before Death,

87

The Bean-Stalk,

88

Weeds,

90

Passer Mortuus Est,

91

Pastoral,

92

Assault,

93

Travel,

94

Low-Tide,

95

Song of a Second April,

96

The Poet and his Book,

97

Alms,

102

Inland,

104

To a Poet that Died Young,

105

Wraith,

107

Ebb,

109

Elaine,

110

Burial,

111

Mariposa,

112

Doubt no more that Oberon,

113

Lament,

114

Exiled,

115

The Death of Autumn,

117

Ode to Silence,

118

Memorial to D. C.,

127

Unnamed Sonnets, i-xii,

134

Wild Swans,

146

SECTION ONE

Renascence

ALL I could see from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood;

I turned and looked another way,

And saw three islands in a bay.

So with my eyes I traced the line

Of the horizon, thin and fine,

Straight around till I was come

Back to where I’d started from

And all I saw from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood.

Over these things I could not see:

These were the things that bounded me;

And I could touch them with my hand,

Almost, I thought, from where I stand.

And all at once things seemed so small

My breath came short, and scarce at all.

But, sure, the sky is big, I said;

Miles and miles above my head;

So here upon my back I’ll lie

And look my fill into the sky.

And so I looked, and, after all,

The sky was not so very tall.

The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,

And—sure enough!—I see the top!

The sky, I thought, is not so grand;

I ’most could touch it with my hand!

And reaching up my hand to try,

I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity

Came down and settled over me;

Forced back my scream into my chest,

Bent back my arm upon my breast,

And, pressing of the Undefined

The definition on my mind,

Held up before my eyes a glass

Through which my shrinking sight did pass

Until it seemed I must behold

Immensity made manifold;

Whispered to me a word whose sound

Deafened the air for worlds around,

And brought unmuffled to my ears

The gossiping of friendly spheres,

The creaking of the tented sky,

The ticking of Eternity.

I saw and heard and knew at last

The How and Why of all things, past,

And present, and for evermore.

The Universe, cleft to the core,

Lay open to my probing sense

That, sick’ning, I would fain pluck thence

But could not,—nay! But needs must suck

At the great wound, and could not pluck

My lips away till I had drawn

All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn!

For my omniscience paid I toll

In infinite remorse of soul.

All sin was of my sinning, all

Atoning mine, and mine the gall

Of all regret. Mine was the weight

Of every brooded wrong, the hate

That stood behind each envious thrust,

Mine every greed, mine every lust.

And all the while for every grief,

Each suffering, I craved relief

With individual desire,—

Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire

About a thousand people crawl;

Perished with each,—then mourned for all!

A man was starving in Capri;

He moved his eyes and looked at me;

I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,

And knew his hunger as my own.

I saw at sea a great fog bank

Between two ships that struck and sank;

A thousand screams the heavens smote;

And every scream tore through my throat.

No hurt I did not feel, no death

That was not mine; mine each last breath

That, crying, met an answering cry

From the compassion that was I.

All suffering mine, and mine its rod;

Mine, pity like the pity of God.

Ah, awful weight! Infinity

Pressed down upon the finite Me!

My anguished spirit, like a bird,

Beating against my lips I heard;

Yet lay the weight so close about

There was no room for it without.

And so beneath the weight lay I

And suffered death, but could not die.

Long had I lain thus, craving death,

When quietly the earth beneath

Gave way, and inch by inch, so great

At last had grown the crushing weight,

Into the earth I sank till I

Full six feet under ground did lie,

And sank no more,—there is no weight

Can follow here, however great.

From off my breast I felt it roll,

And as it went my tortured soul

Burst forth and fled in such a gust

That all about me swirled the dust.

Deep in the earth I rested now;

Cool is its hand upon the brow

And soft its breast beneath the head

Of one who is so gladly dead.

And all at once, and over all

The pitying rain began to fall;

I lay and heard each pattering hoof

Upon my lowly, thatchèd roof,

And seemed to love the sound far more

Than ever I had done before.

For rain it hath a friendly sound

To one who’s six feet under ground;

And scarce the friendly voice or face:

A grave is such a quiet place.

The rain, I said, is kind to come

And speak to me in my new home.

I would I were alive again

To kiss the fingers of the rain,

To drink into my eyes the shine

Of every slanting silver line,

To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze

From drenched and dripping apple-trees.

For soon the shower will be done,

And then the broad face of the sun

Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth

Until the world with answering mirth

Shakes joyously, and each round drop

Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.

How can I bear it, buried here,

While overhead the sky grows clear

And blue again after the storm?

O, multi-coloured, multiform,

Beloved beauty over me,

That I shall never, never see

Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,

That I shall never more behold!

Sleeping your myriad magics through,

Close-sepulchred away from you!

O God, I cried, give me new birth,

And put me back upon the earth!

Upset each cloud’s gigantic gourd

And let the heavy rain, down-poured

In one big torrent, set me free,

Washing my grave away from me!

I ceased; and through the breathless hush

That answered me, the far-off rush

Of herald wings came whispering

Like music down the vibrant string

Of my ascending prayer, and—crash!

Before the wild wind’s whistling lash

The startled storm-clouds reared on high

And plunged in terror down the sky,

And the big rain in one black wave

Fell from the sky and struck my grave.

I know not how such things can be;

I only know there came to me

A fragrance such as never clings

To aught save happy living things;

A sound as of some joyous elf

Singing sweet songs to please himself,

And, through and over everything,

A sense of glad awakening.

The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,

Whispering to me I could hear;

I felt the rain’s cool finger-tips

Brushed tenderly across my lips,

Laid gently on my sealèd sight,

And all at once the heavy night

Fell from my eyes and I could see,—

A drenched and dripping apple-tree,

A last long line of silver rain,

A sky grown clear and blue again.

And as I looked a quickening gust

Of wind blew up to me and thrust

Into my face a miracle

Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,—

I know not how such things can be!—

I breathed my soul back into me.

Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I

And hailed the earth with such a cry

As is not heard save from a man

Who has been dead, and lives again.

About the trees my arms I wound;

Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;

I raised my quivering arms on high;

I laughed and laughed into the sky,

Till at my throat a strangling sob

Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb

Sent instant tears into my eyes;

O God, I cried, no dark disguise

Can e’er hereafter hide from me

Thy radiant identity!

Thou canst not move across the grass

But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,

Nor speak, however silently,

But my hushed voice will answer Thee.

I know the path that tells Thy way

Through the cool eve of every day;

God, I can push the grass apart

And lay my finger on Thy heart!

The world stands out on either side

No wider than the heart is wide;

Above the world is stretched the sky,—

No higher than the soul is high.

The heart can push the sea and land

Farther away on either hand;

The soul can split the sky in two,

And let the face of God shine through.

But East and West will pinch the heart

That cannot keep them pushed apart;

And he whose soul is flat—the sky

Will cave in on him by and by.

God’s World

O WORLD, I cannot hold thee close enough!

Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!

Thy mists, that roll and rise!

Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag

And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag

To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!

World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,

But never knew I this;

Here such a passion is

As stretcheth me apart,—Lord, I do fear

Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year;

My soul is all but out of me,—let fall

No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

Afternoon on a Hill

I WILL be the gladdest thing

Under the sun!

I will touch a hundred flowers

And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds

With quiet eyes,

Watch the wind bow down the grass,

And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show

Up from the town,

I will mark which must be mine,

And then start down.

Journey

AH, could I lay me down in this long grass

And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind

Blow over me,—I am so tired, so tired

Of passing pleasant places! All my life,

Following Care along the dusty road,

Have I looked back at loveliness and sighed;

Yet at my hand an unrelenting hand

Tugged ever, and I passed. All my life long

Over my shoulder have I looked at peace

And now I fain would lie in this long grass

And close my eyes.

Yet onward!

Cat-birds call

Through the long afternoon, and creeks at dusk

Are guttural. Whip-poor-wills wake and cry,

Drawing the twilight close about their throats.

Only my heart makes answer. Eager vines

Go up the rocks and wait; flushed apple-trees

Pause in their dance and break the ring for me;

Dim, shady wood-roads, redolent of fern

And bayberry, that through sweet bevies thread

Of round-faced roses, pink and petulant,

Look back and beckon ere they disappear.

Only my heart, only my heart responds.

Yet, ah, my path is sweet on either side

All through the dragging day,—sharp underfoot,

And hot, and like dead mist the dry dust hangs—

But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach,

And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling,

The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake,

Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road

A gateless garden, and an open path:

My feet to follow, and my heart to hold.

Sorrow

SORROW like a ceaseless rain

Beats upon my heart.

People twist and scream in pain,—

Dawn will find them still again;

This has neither wax nor wane,

Neither stop nor start.

People dress and go to town;

I sit in my chair.

All my thoughts are slow and brown:

Standing up or sitting down

Little matters, or what gown

Or what shoes I wear.

Tavern

I’LL keep a little tavern

Below the high hill’s crest,

Wherein all grey-eyed people

May sit them down and rest.

There shall be plates a-plenty,

And mugs to melt the chill

Of all the grey-eyed people

Who happen up the hill.

There sound will sleep the traveller,

And dream his journey’s end,

But I will rouse at midnight

The falling fire to tend.

Aye, ’tis a curious fancy—

But all the good I know

Was taught me out of two grey eyes

A long time ago.

Ashes of Life

LOVE has gone and left me and the days are all alike;

Eat I must, and sleep I will,—and would that night were here!

But ah!—to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!

Would that it were day again!—with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me and I don’t know what to do;

This or that or what you will is all the same to me;

But all the things that I begin I leave before I’m through,—

There’s little use in anything as far as I can see.

Love has gone and left me,—and the neighbours knock and borrow,

And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse,—

And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow

There’s this little street and this little house.

The Little Ghost

I KNEW her for a little ghost

That in my garden walked;

The wall is high—higher than most—

And the green gate was locked.

And yet I did not think of that

Till after she was gone—

I knew her by the broad white hat,

All ruffled, she had on.

By the dear ruffles round her feet,

By her small hands that hung

In their lace mitts, austere and sweet,

Her gown’s white folds among.

I watched to see if she would stay,

What she would do—and oh!

She looked as if she liked the way

I let my garden grow!

She bent above my favourite mint

With conscious garden grace,

She smiled and smiled—there was no hint

Of sadness in her face.

She held her gown on either side

To let her slippers show,

And up the walk she went with pride,

The way great ladies go.

And where the wall is built in new

And is of ivy bare

She paused—then opened and passed through

A gate that once was there.

Kin to Sorrow

AM I kin to Sorrow,

That so oft

Falls the knocker of my door—

Neither loud nor soft,

But as long accustomed,

Under Sorrow’s hand?

Marigolds around the step

And rosemary stand,

And then comes Sorrow—

And what does Sorrow care

For the rosemary

Or the marigolds there?

Am I kin to Sorrow?

Are we kin?

That so oft upon my door—

Oh, come in!

Three Songs of Shattering

I

THE first rose on my rose-tree

Budded, bloomed, and shattered,

During sad days when to me

Nothing mattered.

Grief of grief has drained me clean;

Still it seems a pity

No one saw,—it must have been

Very pretty.

II

LET the little birds sing;

Let the little lambs play;

Spring is here; and so ’tis spring;—

But not in the old way!

I recall a place

Where a plum-tree grew;

There you lifted up your face,

And blossoms covered you.

If the little birds sing,

And the little lambs play,

Spring is here; and so ’tis spring—

But not in the old way!

III

ALL the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree!

Ere spring was going—ah! spring is gone!

And there comes no summer to the like of you and me,—

Blossom time is early, but no fruit sets on.

All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree,

Browned at the edges, turned in a day;

And I would with all my heart they trimmed a mound for me,

And weeds were tall on all the paths that led that way!

The Shroud

DEATH, I say, my heart is bowed

Unto thine,—O mother!

This red gown will make a shroud

Good as any other!

(I, that would not wait to wear

My own bridal things,

In a dress dark as my hair

Made my answerings.

I, to-night, that till he came

Could not, could not wait,

In a gown as bright as flame

Held for them the gate.)

Death, I say, my heart is bowed

Unto thine,—O mother!

This red gown will make a shroud

Good as any other!

The Dream

LOVE, if I weep it will not matter,

And if you laugh I shall not care;

Foolish am I to think about it,

But it is good to feel you there.

Love, in my sleep I dreamed of waking,—

White and awful the moonlight reached

Over the floor, and somewhere, somewhere,

There was a shutter loose,—it screeched!

Swung in the wind,—and no wind blowing!—

I was afraid, and turned to you,

Put out my hand to you for comfort,—

And you were gone! Cold, cold as dew,

Under my hand the moonlight lay!

Love, if you laugh I shall not care,

But if I weep it will not matter,—

Ah, it is good to feel you there!

Indifference

I SAID,—FOR Love was laggard, O, Love was slow to come,—

“I’ll hear his step and know his step when I am warm in bed;

But I’ll never leave my pillow, though there be some

As would let him in—and take him in with tears!” I said.

I lay,—for Love was laggard, O, he came not until dawn,—

I lay and listened for his step and could not get to sleep;

And he found me at my window with my big cloak on,

All sorry with the tears some folks might weep!

Witch-Wife

SHE is neither pink nor pale,

And she never will be all mine;

She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,

And her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs;

In the sun ’tis a woe to me!

And her voice is a string of coloured beads,

Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can,

And her ways to my ways resign;

But she was not made for any man,

And she never will be all mine.

Blight

HARD seeds of hate I planted

That should by now be grown,—

Rough stalks, and from thick stamens

A poisonous pollen blown,

And odours rank, unbreathable,

From dark corollas thrown!

At dawn from my damp garden

I shook the chilly dew;

The thin boughs locked behind me

That sprang to let me through;

The blossoms slept,—I sought a place

Where nothing lovely grew.

And there, when day was breaking,

I knelt and looked around:

The light was near, the silence

Was palpitant with sound;

I drew my hate from out my breast

And thrust it in the ground.

Oh, ye so fiercely tended,

Ye little seeds of hate!

I bent above your growing

Early and noon and late,

Yet are ye drooped and pitiful,—

I cannot rear ye straight!

The sun seeks out my garden,

No nook is left in shade,

No mist nor mould nor mildew

Endures on any blade,

Sweet rain slants under every bough:

Ye falter, and ye fade.

When the Year Grows Old

I CANNOT but remember

When the year grows old—

October—November—

How she disliked the cold!

She used to watch the swallows

Go down across the sky,

And turn from the window

With a little sharp sigh.

And often when the brown leaves

Were brittle on the ground,

And the wind in the chimney

Made a melancholy sound,

She had a look about her

That I wish I could forget—

The look of a scared thing

Sitting in a net!

Oh, beautiful at nightfall

The soft spitting snow!

And beautiful the bare boughs

Rubbing to and fro!

But the roaring of the fire,

And the warmth of fur,

And the boiling of the kettle

Were beautiful to her!

I cannot but remember

When the year grows old—

October—November—

How she disliked the cold!

Sonnets

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

To-day, 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 neighbour 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 to-day 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

Bluebeard

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 to-night

That I must never more behold your face.

This now is yours. I seek another place.

SECTION TWO

I

MY candle burns at both ends;

It will not last the night;

But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—

It gives a lovely light!

II

SAFE upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:

Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

Recuerdo

WE were very tired, we were very merry—

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—

But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,

We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;

And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;

And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,

From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;

And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,

And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,

We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.

We hailed, “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,

And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;

And she wept, “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,

And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

Thursday

AND if I loved you Wednesday,

Well, what is that to you?

I do not love you Thursday—

So much is true.

And why you come complaining

Is more than I can see.

I loved you Wednesday,—yes—but what

Is that to me?

To the Not Impossible Him

HOW shall I know, unless I go

To Cairo and Cathay,

Whether or not this blessed spot

Is blest in every way?

Now it may be, the flower for me

Is this beneath my nose;

How shall I tell, unless I smell

The Carthaginian rose?

The fabric of my faithful love

No power shall dim or ravel

Whilst I stay here,—but oh, my dear,

If I should ever travel!

The Singing-Woman from the Wood’s Edge

WHAT should I be but a prophet and a liar,

Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?

Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,

What should I be but the fiend’s god-daughter?

And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog,

That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog?

And what should be my singing, that was christened at an altar,

But Aves and Credos and Psalms out of the Psalter?

You will see such webs on the wet grass, maybe,

As a pixie-mother weaves for her baby,

You will find such flame at the wave’s weedy ebb

As flashes in the meshes of a mer-mother’s web,

But there comes to birth no common spawn

From the love of a priest for a leprechaun,

And you never have seen and you never will see

Such things as the things that swaddled me!

After all’s said and after all’s done,

What should I be but a harlot and a nun?

In through the bushes, on any foggy day,

My dad would come a-swishing of the drops away,

With a prayer for my death and a groan for my birth,

A-mumbling of his beads for all that he was worth.

And there’d sit my ma, with her knees beneath her chin,

A-looking in his face and a-drinking of it in,

And a-marking in the moss some funny little saying

That would mean just the opposite of all that he was praying!

He taught me the holy-talk of Vesper and of Matin,

He heard me my Greek and he heard me my Latin,

He blessed me and crossed me to keep my soul from evil,

And we watched him out of sight, and we conjured up the devil!

Oh, the things I haven’t seen and the things I haven’t known,

What with hedges and ditches till after I was grown,

And yanked both ways by my mother and my father,

With a “Which would you better?” and a “Which would you rather?”

With him for a sire and her for a dam,

What should I be but just what I am?

Humoresque

“HEAVEN bless the babe!” they said;

“What queer books she must have read!”

(Love, by whom I was beguiled,

Grant I may not bear a child.)

“Little does she guess to-day

What the world may be,” they say.

(Snow, drift deep and cover

Till the spring my murdered lover.)

She is Overheard Singing

OH, Prue she has a patient man,

And Joan a gentle lover,

And Agatha’s Arth’ is a hug-the-hearth,—

But my true love’s a rover!

Mig, her man’s as good as cheese

And honest as a briar,

Sue tells her love what he’s thinking of,—

But my dear lad’s a liar!

Oh, Sue and Prue and Agatha

Are thick with Mig and Joan!

They bite their threads and shake their heads

And gnaw my name like a bone;

And Prue says, “Mine’s a patient man,

As never snaps me up,”

And Agatha, “Arth’ is a hug-the-hearth,

Could live content in a cup;”

Sue’s man’s mind is like good jell—

All one colour, and clear—

And Mig’s no call to think at all

What’s to come next year,

While Joan makes boast of a gentle lad,

That’s troubled with that and this;—

But they all would give the life they live

For a look from the man I kiss!

Cold he slants his eyes about,

And few enough’s his choice,—

Though he’d slip me clean for a nun, or a queen,

Or a beggar with knots in her voice,—

And Agatha will turn awake

When her good man sleeps sound,

And Mig and Sue and Joan and Prue

Will hear the clock strike round;

For Prue she has a patient man,

As asks not when or why,

And Mig and Sue have naught to do

But peep who’s passing by,

Joan is paired with a putterer

That bastes and tastes and salts,

And Agatha’s Arth’ is a hug-the-hearth,—

But my true love is false!

The Unexplorer

THERE was a road ran past our house

Too lovely to explore.

I asked my mother once—she said

That if you followed where it led

It brought you to the milk-man’s door.

(That’s why I have not travelled more.)

Grown-Up

WAS it for this I uttered prayers,

And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,

That now, domestic as a plate,

I should retire at half-past eight?

The Penitent

I HAD a little Sorrow,

Born of a little Sin,

I found a room all damp with gloom

And shut us all within;

And, “Little Sorrow, weep,” said I,

“And, Little Sin, pray God to die,

And I upon the floor will lie

And think how bad I’ve been!”

Alas for pious planning—

It mattered not a whit!

As far as gloom went in that room,

The lamp might have been lit!

My Little Sorrow would not weep,

My Little Sin would go to sleep—

To save my soul I could not keep

My graceless mind on it!

So up I got in anger,

And took a book I had,

And put a ribbon on my hair

To please a passing lad.

And, “One thing there’s no getting by—

I’ve been a wicked girl,” said I;

“But if I can’t be sorry, why,

I might as well be glad!”

Daphne

WHY do you follow me?—

Any moment I can be

Nothing but a laurel-tree.

Any moment of the chase

I can leave you in my place

A pink bough for your embrace.

Yet if over hill and hollow,

Still it is your will to follow,

I am off;—to heel, Apollo!

Portrait by a Neighbour

BEFORE she has her floor swept

Or her dishes done,

Any day you’ll find her

A-sunning in the sun!

It’s long after midnight

Her key’s in the lock,

And you never see her chimney smoke

Till past ten o’clock!

She digs in her garden

With a shovel and a spoon,

She weeds her lazy lettuce

By the light of the moon.

She walks up the walk

Like a woman in a dream,

She forgets she borrowed butter

And pays you back cream!

Her lawn looks like a meadow,

And if she mows the place

She leaves the clover standing

And the Queen Anne’s lace!

The Merry Maid

OH, I am grown so free from care

Since my heart broke!

I set my throat against the air,

I laugh at simple folk!

There’s little kind and little fair

Is worth its weight in smoke

To me, that’s grown so free from care

Since my heart broke!

Lass, if to sleep you would repair

As peaceful as you woke,

Best not besiege your lover there

For just the words he spoke

To me, that’s grown so free from care

Since my heart broke!

To S. M.

If he should lie a-dying

I AM not willing you should go

Into the earth, where Helen went;

She is awake by now, I know.

Where Cleopatra’s anklets rust

You will not lie with my consent;

And Sappho is a roving dust;

Cressid could love again; Dido,

Rotted in state, is restless still;

You leave me much against my will.

The Philosopher

AND what are you that, wanting you,

I should be kept awake

As many nights as there are days

With weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you,

As many days as crawl

I should be listening to the wind

And looking at the wall?

I know a man that’s a braver man

And twenty men as kind,

And what are you, that you should be

The one man in my mind?

Yet women’s ways are witless ways,

As any sage will tell,—

And what am I, that I should love

So wisely and so well?

Four Sonnets

I

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 worshipper!

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!)

II

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.

III

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.

IV

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.

SECTION THREE

Spring

TO what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of the crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only under ground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself

Is nothing,

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

April

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

City Trees

THE trees along this city street,

Save for the traffic and the trains,

Would make a sound as thin and sweet

As trees in country lanes.

And people standing in their shade

Out of a shower, undoubtedly

Would hear such music as is made

Upon a country tree.

Oh, little leaves that are so dumb

Against the shrieking city air,

I watch you when the wind has come—

I know what sound is there.

The Blue-Flag in the Bog

GOD had called us, and we came;

Our loved Earth to ashes left;

Heaven was a neighbour’s house,

Open flung to us, bereft.

Gay the lights of Heaven showed,

And ’twas God Who walked ahead;

Yet I wept along the road,

Wanting my own house instead.

Wept unseen, unheeded cried,

“All you things my eyes have kissed,

Fare you well! We meet no more,

Lovely, lovely tattered mist!

Weary wings that rise and fall

All day long above the fire!”—

Red with heat was every wall,

Rough with heat was every wire—

“Fare you well, you little winds

That the flying embers chase!

Fare you well, you shuddering day,

With your hands before your face!

And, ah, blackened by strange blight,

Or to a false sun unfurled,

Now for evermore good-bye,

All the gardens in the world!

On the windless hills of Heaven,

That I have no wish to see,

White, eternal lilies stand,

By a lake of ebony.

But the Earth forevermore

Is a place where nothing grows,—

Dawn will come, and no bud break;

Evening, and no blossom close.

Spring will come, and wander slow

Over an indifferent land,

Stand beside an empty creek,

Hold a dead seed in her hand.”

God had called us, and we came,

But the blessed road I trod

Was a bitter road to me,

And at heart I questioned God.

“Though in Heaven,” I said, “be all

That the heart would most desire,

Held Earth naught save souls of sinners

Worth the saving from a fire?

Withered grass,—the wasted growing!

Aimless ache of laden boughs!”

Little things God had forgotten

Called me, from my burning house.

“Though in Heaven,” I said, “be all

That the eye could ask to see,

All the things I ever knew

Are this blaze in back of me.”

“Though in Heaven,” I said, “be all

That the ear could think to lack,

All the things I ever knew

Are this roaring at my back.”

It was God Who walked ahead,

Like a shepherd to the fold;

In His footsteps fared the weak,

And the weary and the old,

Glad enough of gladness over,

Ready for the peace to be,—

But a thing God had forgotten

Was the growing bones of me.

And I drew a bit apart,

And I lagged a bit behind,

And I thought on Peace Eternal,

Lest He look into my mind;

And I gazed upon the sky,

And I thought of Heavenly Rest,—

And I slipped away like water

Through the fingers of the blest!

All their eyes were fixed on Glory,

Not a glance brushed over me;

“Alleluia! Alleluia!”

Up the road,—and I was free.

And my heart rose like a freshet,

And it swept me on before,

Giddy as a whirling stick,

Till I felt the earth once more.

All the Earth was charred and black,

had swept from pole to pole;

And the bottom of the sea

Was as brittle as a bowl;

And the timbered mountain-top

Was as naked as a skull,—

Nothing left, nothing left,

Of the Earth so beautiful!

“Earth,” I said, “how can I leave you?

“You are all I have,” I said;

“What is left to take my mind up,

Living always, and you dead?

“Speak!” I said, “Oh, tell me something!

Make a sign that I can see!

For a keepsake! To keep always!

Quick!—before God misses me!”

And I listened for a voice;—

But my heart was all I heard;

Not a screech-owl, not a loon,

Not a tree-toad said a word.

And I waited for a sign;—

Coals and cinders, nothing more;

And a little cloud of smoke

Floating on a valley floor.

And I peered into the smoke

Till it rotted, like a fog:—

There, encompassed round by fire,

Stood a blue-flag in a bog!

Little flames came wading out,

Straining, draining towards its stem,

But it was so blue and tall

That it scorned to think of them!

Red and thirsty were their tongues,

As the tongues of wolves must be,

But it was so blue and tall—

Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see!

All my heart became a tear,

All my soul became a tower,

Never loved I anything

As I loved that tall blue flower!

It was all the little boats

That had ever sailed the sea,

It was all the little books

That had gone to school with me;

On its roots like iron claws

Rearing up so blue and tall,—

It was all the gallant Earth

With its back against a wall!

In a breath, ere I had breathed,—

Oh, I laughed, I cried, to see!—

I was kneeling at its side,

And it leaned its head on me!

Crumbling stones and sliding sand

Is the road to Heaven now;

Icy at my straining knees

Drags the awful under-tow;

Soon but stepping-stones of dust

Will the road to Heaven be,—

Father, Son and Holy Ghost,

Reach a hand and rescue me!

“There—there, my blue-flag flower;

Hush—hush—go to sleep;

That is only God you hear,

Counting up His folded sheep!

Lullabye—lullabye—

That is only God that calls,

Missing me, seeking me,

Ere the road to nothing falls!

He will set His mighty feet

Firmly on the sliding sand;

Like a little frightened bird

I will creep into His hand;

I will tell Him all my grief,

I will tell Him all my sin;

He will give me half His robe

For a cloak to wrap you in.

Lullabye—lullabye—”

Rocks the burnt-out planet free!—

Father, Son and Holy Ghost,

Reach a hand and rescue me!

Ah, the voice of love at last!

Lo, at last the face of light!

And the whole of His white robe

For a cloak against the night!

And upon my heart asleep

All the things I ever knew!—

“Holds Heaven not some cranny, Lord,

For a flower so tall and blue?”

All’s well and all’s well!

Gay the lights of Heaven show!

In some moist and Heavenly place

We will set it out to grow.

Eel-Grass

NO matter what I say,

All that I really love

Is the rain that flattens on the bay,

And the eel-grass in the cove;

The jingle-shells that lie and bleach

At the tide-line, and the trace

Of higher tides along the beach:

Nothing in this place.

Elegy before Death

THERE will be rose and rhododendron

When you are dead and under ground;

Still will be heard from white syringas

Heavy with bees, a sunny sound;

Still will the tamaracks be raining

After the rain has ceased, and still

Will there be robins in the stubble,

Brown sheep upon the warm green hill.

Spring will not ail nor autumn falter;

Nothing will know that you are gone,

Saving alone some sullen plough-land

None but yourself sets foot upon;

Saving the may-weed and the pig-weed

Nothing will know that you are dead,—

These, and perhaps a useless wagon

Standing beside some tumbled shed.

Oh, there will pass with your great passing

Little of beauty not your own,—

Only the light from common water,

Only the grace from simple stone!

The Bean-Stalk

HO, Giant! This is I!

I have built me a bean-stalk into your sky!

La,—but it’s lovely, up so high!

This is how I came,—I put

There my knee, here my foot,

Up and up, from shoot to shoot—

And the blessed bean-stalk thinning

Like the mischief all the time,

Till it took me rocking, spinning,

In a dizzy, sunny circle,

Making angles with the root,

Far and out above the cackle

Of the city I was born in,

Till the little dirty city

In the light so sheer and sunny

Shone as dazzling bright and pretty

As the money that you find

In a dream of finding money—

What a wind! What a morning!—

Till the tiny, shiny city,

When I shot a glance below,

Shaken with a giddy laughter,

Sick and blissfully afraid,

Was a dew-drop on a blade,

And a pair of moments after

Was the whirling guess I made,—

And the wind was like a whip

Cracking past my icy ears,

And my hair stood out behind,

And my eyes were full of tears,

Wide-open and cold,

More tears than they could hold,

The wind was blowing so,

And my teeth were in a row,

Dry and grinning,

And I felt my foot slip,

And I scratched the wind and whined,

And I clutched the stalk and jabbered,

With my eyes shut blind,—

What a wind! What a wind!

Your broad sky, Giant,

Is the shelf of a cupboard;

I make bean-stalks, I’m

A builder, like yourself,

But bean-stalks is my trade,

I couldn’t make a shelf,

Don’t know how they’re made,

Now, a bean-stalk is more pliant—

La, what a climb!

Weeds

WHITE with daisies and red with sorrel

And empty, empty under the sky!—

Life is a quest and love a quarrel—

Here is a place for me to lie.

Daisies spring from damnèd seeds,

And this red fire that here I see

Is a worthless crop of crimson weeds,

Cursed by farmers thriftily.

But here, unhated for an hour,

The sorrel runs in ragged flame,

The daisy stands, a bastard flower,

Like flowers that bear an honest name.

And here a while, where no wind brings

The baying of a pack athirst,

May sleep the sleep of blessed things

The blood too bright, the brow accurst.

Passer Mortuus Est

DEATH devours all lovely things;

Lesbia with her sparrow

Shares the darkness,—presently

Every bed is narrow.

Unremembered as old rain

Dries the sheer libation,

And the little petulant hand

Is an annotation.

After all, my erstwhile dear,

My no longer cherished,

Need we say it was not love,

Now that love is perished?

Pastoral

IF it were only still!—

With far away the shrill

Crying of a cock;

Or the shaken bell

From a cow’s throat

Moving through the bushes;

Or the soft shock

Of wizened apples falling

From an old tree

In a forgotten orchard

Upon the hilly rock!

Oh, grey hill,

Where the grazing herd

Licks the purple blossom,

Crops the spiky weed!

Oh, stony pasture,

Where the tall mullein

Stands up so sturdy

On its little seed!

Assault

I

I HAD forgotten how the frogs must sound

After a year of silence, else I think

I should not so have ventured forth alone

At dusk upon this unfrequented road.

II

I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk

Between me and the crying of the frogs?

Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,

That am a timid woman, on her way

From one house to another!

Travel

THE railroad track is miles away,

And the day is loud with voices speaking,

Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day

But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn’t a train goes by,

Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,

But I see its cinders red on the sky,

And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with the friends I make,

And better friends I’ll not be knowing,

Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,

No matter where it’s going.

Low-Tide

THESE wet rocks where the tide has been,

Barnacled white and weeded brown

And slimed beneath to a beautiful green,

These wet rocks where the tide went down

Will show again when the tide is high

Faint and perilous, far from shore,

No place to dream, but a place to die,—

The bottom of the sea once more.

There was a child that wandered through

A giant’s empty house all day,—

House full of wonderful things and new,

But no fit place for a child to play.

Song of a Second April

APRIL this year, not otherwise

Than April of a year ago,

Is full of whispers, full of sighs,

Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;

Hepaticas that pleased you so

Are here again, and butterflies.

There rings a hammering all day,

And shingles lie about the doors;

In orchards near and far away

The grey woodpecker taps and bores;

And men are merry at their chores,

And children earnest at their play.

The larger streams run still and deep,

Noisy and swift the small brooks run

Among the mullein stalks the sheep

Go up the hillside in the sun,

Pensively,—only you are gone,

You that alone I cared to keep.

The Poet and his Book

Down, you mongrel, Death!

Back into your kennel!

I have stolen breath

In a stalk of fennel!

You shall scratch and you shall whine

Many a night, and you shall worry

Many a bone, before you bury

One sweet bone of mine!

When shall I be dead?

When my flesh is withered,

And above my head

Yellow pollen gathered

All the empty afternoon?

When sweet lovers pause and wonder

Who am I that lie thereunder,

Hidden from the moon?

This my personal death?—

That my lungs be failing

To inhale the breath

Others are exhaling?

This my subtle spirit’s end?—

Ah, when the thawed winter splashes

Over these chance dust and ashes,

Weep not me, my friend!

Me, by no means dead

In that hour, but surely

When this book, unread,

Rots to earth obscurely,

And no more to any breast,

Close against the clamorous swelling

Of the thing there is no telling,

Are these pages pressed!

When this book is mould,

And a book of many

Waiting to be sold

For a casual penny,

In a little open case,

In a street unclean and cluttered,

Where a heavy mud is spattered

From the passing drays,

Stranger, pause and look;

From the dust of ages

Lift this little book,

Turn the tattered pages,

Read me, do not let me die!

Search the fading letters, finding

Steadfast in the broken binding

All that once was I!

When these veins are weeds,

When these hollowed sockets

Watch the rooty seeds

Bursting down like rockets,

And surmise the spring again,

Or, remote in that black cupboard,

Watch the pink worms writhing upward

At the smell of rain,

Boys and girls that lie

Whispering in the hedges,

Do not let me die,

Mix me with your pledges;

Boys and girls that slowly walk

In the woods, and weep, and quarrel,

Staring past the pink wild laurel,

Mix me with your talk,

Do not let me die!

Farmers at your raking,

When the sun is high,

While the hay is making,

When, along the stubble strewn,

Withering on their stalks uneaten,

Strawberries turn dark and sweeten

In the lapse of noon;

Shepherds on the hills,

In the pastures, drowsing

To the tinkling bells

Of the brown sheep browsing;

Sailors crying through the storm;

Scholars at your study; hunters

Lost amid the whirling winter’s

Whiteness uniform;

Men that long for sleep;

Men that wake and revel;—

If an old song leap

To your senses’ level

At such moments, may it be

Sometimes, though a moment only,

Some forgotten, quaint and homely

Vehicle of me!

Women at your toil,

Women at your leisure

Till the kettle boil,

Snatch of me your pleasure,

Where the broom-straw marks the leaf;

Women quiet with your weeping

Lest you wake a workman sleeping,

Mix me with your grief!

Boys and girls that steal

From the shocking laughter

Of the old, to kneel

By a dripping rafter

Under the discoloured eaves,

Out of trunks with hingeless covers

Lifting tales of saints and lovers,

Travellers, goblins, thieves,

Suns that shine by night,

Mountains made from valleys,—

Bear me to the light,

Flat upon your bellies

By the webby window lie,

Where the little flies are crawling,—

Read me, margin me with scrawling,

Do not let me die!

Sexton, ply your trade!

In a shower of gravel

Stamp upon your spade!

Many a rose shall ravel,

Many a metal wreath shall rust

In the rain, and I go singing

Through the lots where you are flinging

Yellow clay on dust!

Alms

MY heart is what it was before,

A house where people come and go;

But it is winter with your love,

The sashes are beset with snow.

I light the lamp and lay the cloth,

I blow the coals to blaze again;

But it is winter with your love,

The frost is thick upon the pane.

I know a winter when it comes:

The leaves are listless on the boughs;

I watched your love a little while,

And brought my plants into the house.

I water them and turn them south,

I snap the dead brown from the stem;

But it is winter with your love,—

I only tend and water them.

There was a time I stood and watched

The small, ill-natured sparrows’ fray;

I loved the beggar that I fed,

I cared for what he had to say,

I stood and watched him out of sight;

To-day I reach around the door

And set a bowl upon the step;

My heart is what it was before,

But it is winter with your love;

I scatter crumbs upon the sill,

And close the window,—and the birds

May take or leave them, as they will.

Inland

PEOPLE that build their houses inland,

People that buy a plot of ground

Shaped like a house, and build a house there,

Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

Of water sucking the hollow ledges,

Tons of water striking the shore,—

What do they long for, as I long for

One salt smell of the sea once more?

People the waves have not awakened,

Spanking the boats at the harbour’s head,

What do they long for, as I long for,—

Starting up in my inland bed,

Beating the narrow walls, and finding

Neither a window nor a door,

Screaming to God for death by drowning,—

One salt taste of the sea once more?

To a Poet that Died Young

MINSTREL, what have you to do

With this man that, after you,

Sharing not your happy fate,

Sat as England’s Laureate?

Vainly, in these iron days,

Strives the poet in your praise,

Minstrel, by whose singing side

Beauty walked, until you died.

Still, though none should hark again,

Drones the blue-fly in the pane,

Thickly crusts the blackest moss,

Blows the rose its musk across,

Floats the boat that is forgot

None the less to Camelot.

Many a bard’s untimely death

Lends unto his verses breath;

Here’s a song was never sung:

Growing old is dying young.

Minstrel, what is this to you:

That a man you never knew,

When your grave was far and green,

Sat and gossipped with a queen?

Thalia knows how rare a thing

Is it, to grow old and sing;

When the brown and tepid tide

Closes in on every side.

Who shall say if Shelley’s gold

Had withstood it to grow old?

Wraith

“THIN Rain, whom are you haunting,

That you haunt my door?”

—Surely it is not I she’s wanting;

Someone living here before—

“Nobody’s in the house but me:

You may come in if you like and see.”

Thin as thread, with exquisite fingers,—

Have you seen her, any of you?—

Grey shawl, and leaning on the wind,

And the garden showing through?

Glimmering eyes,—and silent, mostly,

Sort of a whisper, sort of a purr,

Asking something, asking it over,

If you get a sound from her.—

Ever see her, any of you?—

Strangest thing I’ve ever known,—

Every night since I moved in,

And I came to be alone.

“Thin Rain, hush with your knocking!

You may not come in!

This is I that you hear rocking;

Nobody’s with me, nor has been!”

Curious, how she tried the window,—

Odd, the way she tries the door,—

Wonder just what sort of people

Could have had this house before....

Ebb

I KNOW what my heart is like

Since your love died:

It is like a hollow ledge

Holding a little pool

Left there by the tide,

A little tepid pool,

Drying inward from the edge.

Elaine

OH, come again to Astolat!

I will not ask you to be kind.

And you may go when you will go,

And I will stay behind.

I will not say how dear you are,

Or ask you if you hold me dear,

Or trouble you with things for you

The way I did last year.

So still the orchard, Lancelot,

So very still the lake shall be,

You could not guess—though you should guess—

What is become of me.

So wide shall be the garden-walk,

The garden-seat so very wide,

You needs must think—if you should think—

The lily maid had died.

Save that, a little way away,

I’d watch you for a little while,

To see you speak, the way you speak,

And smile,—if you should smile.

Burial

MINE is a body that should die at sea!

And have for a grave, instead of a grave

Six feet deep and the length of me,

All the water that is under the wave!

And terrible fishes to seize my flesh,

Such as a living man might fear,

And eat me while I am firm and fresh,—

Not wait till I’ve been dead for a year!

Mariposa

BUTTERFLIES are white and blue

In this field we wander through.

Suffer me to take your hand.

Death comes in a day or two.

All the things we ever knew

Will be ashes in that hour.

Mark the transient butterfly,

How he hangs upon the flower.

Suffer me to take your hand.

Suffer me to cherish you

Till the dawn is in the sky.

Whether I be false or true,

Death comes in a day or two.

Doubt no more that Oberon

DOUBT no more that Oberon—

Never doubt that Pan

Lived, and played a reed, and ran

After nymphs in a dark forest

In the merry, credulous days,—

Lived, and led a fairy band

Over the indulgent land!

Ah, for in this dourest, sorest

Age man’s eye has looked upon,

Death to fauns and death to fays,

Still the dog-wood dares to raise—

Healthy tree, with trunk and root—

Ivory bowls that bear no fruit,

And the starlings and the jays—

Birds that cannot even sing—

Dare to come again in spring!

Lament

LISTEN, children:

Your father is dead.

From his old coats

I’ll make you little jackets;

I’ll make you little trousers

From his old pants.

There’ll be in his pockets

Things he used to put there,

Keys and pennies

Covered with tobacco;

Dan shall have the pennies

To save in his bank;

Anne shall have the keys

To make a pretty noise with.

Life must go on,

And the dead be forgotten;

Life must go on,

Though good men die;

Anne, eat your breakfast;

Dan, take your medicine;

Life must go on;

I forget just why.

Exiled

SEARCHING my heart for its true sorrow,

This is the thing I find to be:

That I am weary of words and people,

Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness

Of the strong wind and shattered spray;

Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound

Of the big surf that breaks all day.

Always before about my dooryard,

Marking the reach of the winter sea,

Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,

Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea;

Always I climbed the wave at morning,

Shook the sand from my shoes at night,

That now am caught beneath great buildings

Stricken with noise, confused with light.

If I could hear the green piles groaning

Under the windy wooden piers,

See once again the bobbing barrels,

And the black sticks that fence the weirs,

If I could see the weedy mussels

Crusting the wrecked and rotting hulls,

Hear once again the hungry crying

Overhead, of the wheeling gulls,

Feel once again the shanty straining

Under the turning of the tide,

Fear once again the rising freshet,

Dread the bell in the fog outside,—

I should be happy,—that was happy

All day long on the coast of Maine!

I have a need to hold and handle

Shells and anchors and ships again!

I should be happy, that am happy

Never at all since I came here.

I am too long away from water.

I have a need of water near.

The Death of Autumn

WHEN reeds are dead and a straw to thatch the marshes,

And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind

Like agèd warriors westward, tragic, thinned

Of half their tribe, and over the flattened rushes,

Stripped of its secret, open, stark and bleak,

Blackens afar the half-forgotten creek,—

Then leans on me the weight of the year, and crushes

My heart. I know that Beauty must ail and die,

And will be born again,—but ah, to see

Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky!

Oh, Autumn! Autumn!—What is the Spring to me?

Ode to Silence

AYE, but she?

Your other sister and my other soul,

Grave Silence, lovelier

Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?

Clio, not you,

Not you, Calliope,

Nor all your wanton line,

Not Beauty’s perfect self shall comfort me

For Silence once departed,

For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,

Whom evermore I follow wilfully,

Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;

Thalia, not you,

Not you, Melpomene,

Not your incomparable feet, O thin Terpsichore,

I seek in this great hall,

But one more pale, more pensive, most beloved of you all.

I seek her from afar.

I come from temples where her altars are,

From groves that bear her name,

Noisy with stricken victims now and sacrificial flame,

And cymbals struck on high and strident faces

Obstreperous in her praise

They neither love nor know,

A goddess of gone days,

Departed long ago,

Abandoning the invaded shrines and fanes

Of her old sanctuary,

A deity obscure and legendary,

Of whom there now remains,

For sages to decipher and priests to garble,

Only and for a little while her letters wedged in marble,

Which even now, behold, the friendly mumbling rain erases,

And the inarticulate snow,

Leaving at last of her least signs and traces

None whatsoever, nor whither she is vanished from these places.

“She will love well,” I said,

“If love be of that heart inhabiter,

The flowers of the dead;

The red anemone that with no sound

Moves in the wind, and from another wound

That sprang, the heavily-sweet blue hyacinth,

That blossoms underground,

And sallow poppies, will be dear to her.

And will not Silence know

In the black shade of what obsidian steep

Stiffens the white narcissus numb with sleep?

(Seed which Demeter’s daughter bore from home,

Uptorn by desperate fingers long ago,

Reluctant even as she,

Undone Persephone,

And even as she set out again to grow

In twilight, in perdition’s lean and inauspicious loam).

She will love well,” I said,

“The flowers of the dead;

Where dark Persephone the winter round,

Uncomforted for home, uncomforted,

Lacking a sunny southern slope in northern Sicily,

With sullen pupils focussed on a dream,

Stares on the stagnant stream

That moats the unequivocable battlements of Hell,

There, there will she be found,

She that is Beauty veiled from men and Music in a swound.”

“I long for Silence as they long for breath

Whose helpless nostrils drink the bitter sea;

What thing can be

So stout, what so redoubtable, in Death

What fury, what considerable rage, if only she,

Upon whose icy breast,

Unquestioned, uncaressed,

One time I lay,

And whom always I lack,

Even to this day,

Being by no means from that frigid bosom weaned away,

If only she therewith be given me back?”

I sought her down that dolorous labyrinth,

Wherein no shaft of sunlight ever fell,

And in among the bloodless everywhere

I sought her, but the air,

Breathed many times and spent,

Was fretful with a whispering discontent,

And questioning me, importuning me to tell

Some slightest tidings of the light of day they know no more,

Plucking my sleeve, the eager shades were with me where I went.

I paused at every grievous door,

And harked a moment, holding up my hand,—and for a space

A hush was on them, while they watched my face;

And then they fell a-whispering as before;

So that I smiled at them and left them, seeing she was not there.

I sought her, too,

Among the upper gods, although I knew

She was not like to be where feasting is,

Nor near to Heaven’s lord,

Being a thing abhorred

And shunned of him, although a child of his,

(Not yours, not yours; to you she owes not breath,

Mother of Song, being sown of Zeus upon a dream of Death).

Fearing to pass unvisited some place

And later learn, too late, how all the while,

With her still face,

She had been standing there and seen me pass, without a smile,

I sought her even to the sagging board whereat

The stout immortals sat;

But such a laughter shook the mighty hall

No one could hear me say:

Had she been seen upon the Hill that day?

And no one knew at all

How long I stood or when at last I sighed and went away.

There is a garden lying in a lull

Between the mountains and the mountainous sea,

I know not where, but which a dream diurnal

Paints on my lids a moment till the hull

Be lifted from the kernel

And Slumber fed to me.

Your foot-print is not there, Mnemosene,

Though it would seem a ruined place and after

Your lichenous heart, being full

Of broken columns, caryatides

Thrown to the earth and fallen forward on their jointless knees,

And urns funereal altered into dust

Minuter than the ashes of the dead,

And Psyche’s lamp out of the earth up-thrust,

Dripping itself in marble wax on what was once the bed

Of Love, and his young body asleep, but now is dust instead.

There twists the bitter-sweet, the white wisteria

Fastens its fingers in the strangling wall,

And the wide crannies quicken with bright weeds;

There dumbly like a worm all day the still white orchid feeds;

But never an echo of your daughters’ laughter

Is there, nor any sign of you at all

Swells fungous from the rotten bough, grey mother of Pieria!

Only her shadow once upon a stone

I saw,—and, lo, the shadow and the garden, too, were gone.

I tell you you have done her body an ill,

You chatterers, you noisy crew!

She is not anywhere!

I sought her in deep Hell;

And through the world as well;

I thought of Heaven and I sought her there;

Above nor underground

Is Silence to be found,

That was the very warp and woof of you,

Lovely before your songs began and after they were through!

Oh, say if on this hill

Somewhere your sister’s body lies in death,

So I may follow there, and make a wreath

Of my locked hands, that on her quiet breast

Shall lie till age has withered them!

(Ah, sweetly from the rest

I see

Turn and consider me

Compassionate Euterpe!)

“There is a gate beyond the gate of Death,

Beyond the gate of everlasting Life,

Beyond the gates of Heaven and Hell,” she saith,

“Whereon but to believe is horror!

Whereon to meditate engendereth

Even in deathless spirits such as I

A tumult in the breath,

A chilling of the inexhaustible blood

Even in my veins that never will be dry,

And in the austere, divine monotony

That is my being, the madness of an unaccustomed mood.

This is her province whom you lack and seek;

And seek her not elsewhere.

Hell is a thoroughfare

For pilgrims,—Herakles,

And he that loved Euridice too well,

Have walked therein; and many more than these;

And witnessed the desire and the despair

Of souls that passed reluctantly and sicken for the air;

You, too, have entered Hell,

And issued thence; but thence whereof I speak

None has returned;—for thither fury brings

Only the driven ghosts of them that flee before all things.

Oblivion is the name of this abode: and she is there.”

Oh, radiant Song! Oh, gracious Memory!

Be long upon this height

I shall not climb again!

I know the way you mean,—the little night,

And the long empty day,—never to see

Again the angry light,

Or hear the hungry noises cry my brain!

Ah, but she,

Your other sister and my other soul,

She shall again be mine;

And I shall drink her from a silver bowl,

A chilly thin green wine,

Not bitter to the taste,

Not sweet,

Not of your press, oh, restless, clamorous nine,—

To foam beneath the frantic hoofs of mirth—

But savouring faintly of the acid earth,

And trod by pensive feet

From perfect clusters ripened without haste

Out of the urgent heat

In some clear glimmering vaulted twilight under the odorous vine.

Lift up your lyres! Sing on!

But as for me, I seek your sister whither she is gone.

Memorial to D. C.

[VASSAR COLLEGE, 1918]

Oh, loveliest throat of all sweet throats,

Where now no more the music is,

With hands that wrote you little notes

I write you little elegies!

I

Epitaph

HEAP not on this mound

Roses that she loved so well;

Why bewilder her with roses,

That she cannot see or smell?

She is happy where she lies

With the dust upon her eyes.

II

Prayer to Persephone

BE to her, Persephone,

All the things I might not be;

Take her head upon your knee.

She that was so proud and wild,

Flippant, arrogant and free,

She that had no need of me,

Is a little lonely child

Lost in Hell,—Persephone,

Take her head upon your knee;

Say to her, “My dear, my dear,

It is not so dreadful here.”

III

Chorus

GIVE away her gowns,

Give away her shoes;

She has no more use

For her fragrant gowns;

Take them all down,

Blue, green, blue,

Lilac, pink, blue,

From their padded hangers;

She will dance no more

In her narrow shoes;

Sweep her narrow shoes

From the closet floor.

IV

Elegy

LET them bury your big eyes

In the secret earth securely,

Your thin fingers, and your fair,

Soft, indefinite-coloured hair,—

All of these in some way, surely,

From the secret earth shall rise;

Not for these I sit and stare,

Broken and bereft completely;

Your young flesh that sat so neatly

On your little bones will sweetly

Blossom in the air.

But your voice,—never the rushing

Of a river underground,

Not the rising of the wind

In the trees before the rain,

Not the woodcock’s watery call,

Not the note the white-throat utters,

Not the feet of children pushing

Yellow leaves along the gutters

In the blue and bitter fall,

Shall content my musing mind

For the beauty of that sound

That in no new way at all

Ever will be heard again.

Sweetly through the sappy stalk

Of the vigorous weed,

Holding all it held before,

Cherished by the faithful sun,

On and on eternally

Shall your altered fluid run,

Bud and bloom and go to seed;

But your singing days are done;

But the music of your talk

Never shall the chemistry

Of the secret earth restore.

All your lovely words are spoken.

Once the ivory box is broken,

Beats the golden bird no more.

V

Dirge

BOYS and girls that held her dear,

Do your weeping now;

All you loved of her lies here.

Brought to earth the arrogant brow,

And the withering tongue

Chastened; do your weeping now.

Sing whatever songs are sung,

Wind whatever wreath,

For a playmate perished young,

For a spirit spent in death.

Boys and girls that held her dear,

All you loved of her lies here.

Sonnets

I

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 for evermore

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.

II

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 hot 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.

III

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.

IV

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.

V

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.

VI

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 heart,”

’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.

VII

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.

VIII

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.

IX

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;

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.”

X

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 how 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!

XI

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 worshipper 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.

XII

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!

Wild Swans

I LOOKED in my heart while the wild swans went over.

And what did I see I had not seen before?

Only a question less or a question more;

Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.

Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,

House without air, I leave you and lock your door.

Wild swans, come over the town, come over

The town again, trailing your legs and crying!

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Transcriber’s Notes

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling inconsistencies were not changed.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied by examining other copies of the same poems.

Transcriber added a missing exclamation mark at the end of Burial.”

Decorative floral bullets are similar, but not identical, to the ones in the original.

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Table of Contents

Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay

CONTENTS

SECTION ONE

Renascence

God’s World

Afternoon on a Hill

Journey

Sorrow

Tavern

Ashes of Life

The Little Ghost

Kin to Sorrow

Three Songs of Shattering

I

II

III

The Shroud

The Dream

Indifference

Witch-Wife

Blight

When the Year Grows Old

Sonnets

I

II

III

IV

V

VI Bluebeard

SECTION TWO

I

II

Recuerdo

Thursday

To the Not Impossible Him

The Singing-Woman from the Wood’s Edge

Humoresque

She is Overheard Singing

The Unexplorer

Grown-Up

The Penitent

Daphne

Portrait by a Neighbour

The Merry Maid

To S. M.

The Philosopher

Four Sonnets

I

II

III

IV

SECTION THREE

Spring

City Trees

The Blue-Flag in the Bog

Eel-Grass

Elegy before Death

The Bean-Stalk

Weeds

Passer Mortuus Est

Pastoral

Assault

I

II

Travel

Low-Tide

Song of a Second April

The Poet and his Book

Alms

Inland

To a Poet that Died Young

Wraith

Ebb

Elaine

Burial

Mariposa

Doubt no more that Oberon

Lament

Exiled

The Death of Autumn

Ode to Silence

Memorial to D. C.

I Epitaph

II Prayer to Persephone

III Chorus

IV Elegy

V Dirge

Sonnets

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

Wild Swans

Transcriber’s Notes

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