Edna St. Vincent Millay

“ All criers proclaim it, and all steeples ring.
This being done, there let the matter rest.
What more remains is neither here nor there.
That you requite me not is plain to see;
Myself your slave herein have I confessed:
Thus far, indeed, the world may mock at me;
But if I suffer, it is my own affair.
IV-III LOVE IS NOT BLIND
Love is not blind. I see with single eye
Your ugliness and other women's grace.
I know the imperfection of your face,--
The eyes too wide apart, the brow too high
For beauty. ”

“ For know, this was no mortal youth, to be
Of you confounded, but a heavenly guest,
Assuming earthly garb for love of me,
And hell's demure attire for love of jest:
Bringing me asphodel and a dark feather,
He will return, and we shall laugh together!
IV-XVII LOVING YOU LESS THAN LIFE
Loving you less than life, a little less
Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall
Or brush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess
I cannot swear I love you not at all. ”

“ And you will know me still.
I shall be only a little taller
Than when I went.
HYACINTH
I am in love with him to whom a hyacinth is dearer
Than I shall ever be dear.
On nights when the field-mice are abroad he cannot
sleep:
He hears their narrow teeth at the bulbs of his
hyacinths. ”

“ I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity,--let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again. ”

“ On the great cairn of Knowledge!
(Where lies what Euclid knew, a little gray stone,
What Plato, what Pascal, what Galileo:
Little gray stones, little gray stones on a cairn.)
Tell me, what is the name of the highest mountain?
Name me a crater of fire! a peak of snow!
Name me the mountains on the moon!
But the name of the mountain that you climb
all day,
Ask not your teacher that.
SPRING SONG
I know why the yellow forsythia
Holds its breath and will not bloom,
And the robin thrusts his beak in his wing.
Want me to tell you? Think you can bear it? ”

“ And roll of a charred log, and the roused shower
Of snapping sparks; then sharply from the wall
The unforgivable crowing of the hour.
One instant set ajar, her quiet ear
Was stormed and forced by the full rout of day:
The rasp of a saw, the fussy cluck and bray
Of hens, the wheeze of a pump, she needs must hear;
She inescapably must endure to feel
Across her teeth the grinding of a backing wagon
wheel. ”

“ 'Tis not love's going hurts my days,
But that it went in little ways. ”

“ Her heart like a frightened partridge, and she ran
And slid the bolt, leaving his entrance free;
Then in the cellar way till he was gone
Hid, breathless, praying that he might not see
The chair sway she had laid her hand upon
In passing. Sour and damp from that dark vault
Arose to her the well-remembered chill;
She saw the narrow wooden stairway still
Plunging into the earth, and the thin salt
Crusting the crocks; until she knew him far,
So stood, with listening eyes upon the empty doughnut
jar. ”

“ For their curled bark, that instantly will leap
Into a blaze, nor thinking to return
Some day, distracted, as of old, to find
Smooth, heavy, round, green logs with a wet, gray
rind
Only, and knotty chunks that will not burn,
(That day when dust is on the wood-box floor,
And some old catalogue, and a brown, shriveled
apple core) . ”

“ With mowing, and locusts rising raspingly,
When that small bird with iridescent wings
And long incredible sudden silver tongue
Had just flashed (and yet may be not!) among
The dwarf nasturtiums--when no sagging springs
Of shower were in the whole bright sky, somehow
Upon this roof the rain would drum as it was drumming
now. ”

“ Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would note
In me a beauty that was never mine,
How first you knew me in a book I wrote,
How first you loved me for a written line:
So are we bound till broken is the throat
Of Song, and Art no more leads out the Nine. ”

“ He that would eat of love must eat it where it hangs. ”

“ She had a horror he would die at night.
And sometimes when the light began to fade
She could not keep from noticing how white
The birches looked--and then she would be afraid,
Even with a lamp, to go about the house
And lock the windows; and as night wore on
Toward morning, if a dog howled, or a mouse
Squeaked in the floor, long after it was gone
Her flesh would sit awry on her. By day
She would forget somewhat, and it would seem
A silly thing to go with just this dream
And get a neighbor to come at night and stay.
But it would strike her sometimes, making the tea:
She had kept that kettle boiling all night long, for ”

“ Blessed be Death, that cuts in marble
What would have sunk to dust! ”

“ I would blossom if I were a rose. ”

“ And moons that work by switches, all the things
That please a sick man's fancy, and a flat
Spry convalescent kiss, and a small pat
Upon the pillow,--paper offerings.
The light goes out with her; the shadows sprawl. ”

“ By which he was distinguished; from that day
They went about together, as a rule.
She told, in secret and with whispering,
How he had flashed a mirror in her eyes;
And as she told, it struck her with surprise
That this was not so wonderful a thing.
But what's the odds?--It's pretty nice to know
You've got a friend to keep you company everywhere
you go. ”

“ It's little I know what's in my heart,
What's in my mind it's little I know,
But there's that in me must up and start,
And it's little I care where my feet go. ”

“ Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn. ”

“ I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year; ”

“ And all the loveliest things there be
Come simply, so, it seems to me. ”

“ The heart grows weary after a little
Of what it loved for a little while. ”

“ I can remember, and so can you.
(Though we'd better watch out for you-know-who,
When we sit around remembering Spring) .
We shall hardly notice in a year or two.
You can get accustomed to anything.
MEMORY OF CAPE COD
The wind in the ash-tree sounds like surf on the
shore at Truro.
I will shut my eyes . . . hush, be still with your
silly bleating, sheep on Shillingstone Hill . . .
They said: Come along! They said: Leave your
pebbles on the sand and come along, it's long after
sunset!
The mosquitoes will be thick in the pine-woods along
by Long Nook, the wind's died down! ”

“ I will come back to you, I swear I will;
And you will know me still.
I shall be only a little taller
Than when I went. ”