Poems by Edna St. Vincent MillayOnce from a big, big building,
When I was small, small,
The queer folk in the windows
Would smile at me and call.
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
My heart is what it was before,
A house where people come and go;
But it is winter with your love,
I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And do you think that love itself,
Living in such an ugly house,
Can prosper long?
We meet and part;
And you as well must die, belovèd dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
(On reflecting that the world
is ready to go to war again)
Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out.
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!
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
Cold wind of autumn, blowing loud
At dawn, a fortnight overdue,
Jostling the doors, and tearingthrough
Being Young and Green, I said in love's despite:
Never in the world will I to living wight
Give over, air my mind
To anyone,
Hard seeds of hate I planted
That should by now be grown,
Rough stalks, and from thick stamens
A poisonous pollen blown,
This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
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,
Give away her gowns,
Give away her shoes;
She has no more use
For her fragrant gowns;
Take them all down,
Blue, green, blue,
The trees along this city street,
Save for the traffic and the trains,
Would make a sound as thin and sweet
I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
Silver bark of beech, and sallow
Bark of yellow birch and yellow
Twig of willow.
Stripe of green in moosewood maple,
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
It's little I care what path I take,
And where it leads it's little I care;
But out of this house, lest my heart break,
Boys and girls that held her dear,
Do your weeping now;
All you loved of her lies here.
Brought to earth the arrogant brow,
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
Doubt no more that Oberon
Never doubt that Pan
Lived, and played a reed, and ran
After nymphs in a dark forest,
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,
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;
Let them bury your big eyes
In the secret earth securely,
Your thin fingers, and your fair,
Soft, indefinite-colored hair,
There will be rose and rhododendron
When you are dead and under ground;
Still will be heard from white syringas
Heap not on this mound
Roses that she loved so well:
Why bewilder her with roses,
That she cannot see or smell?
Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare.
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
I1.
Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,
.
And drag me at your chariot till I die, --
.
I drank at every vine.
The last was like the first.
I came upon no wine
So wonderful as thirst.
I gnawed at every root.
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.
I know I might have lived in such a way
As to have suffered only pain:
Loving not man nor dog;
Not money, even; feeling
O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists that roll and rise!
Was it for this I uttered prayers,
And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,
That now, domestic as a plate,
Here is a wound that never will heal, I know,
Being wrought not of a dearness and a death,
"Heaven bless the babe!" they said.
"What queer books she must have read!"
(Love, by whom I was beguiled,
I do but ask that you be always fair
That I forever may continue kind;
Knowing me what I am, you should not dare
I dreamed I moved among the Elysian fields,
In converse with sweet women long since dead;
I know some poison I could drink
I've often thought I'd taste it
But mother bought if for the sink
I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
I know the face of Falsehood and her Tongue
Honeyed with unction, Plausible with guile,
I shall go back again to the bleak shore
And build a little shanty on the sand
In such a way that the extremest band
I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
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,
Brother, that breathe the August air
Ten thousand years from now,
And smell if still your orchards bear
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;
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
Let us abandon then our gardens and go home
And sit in the sitting-room
Am I kin to Sorrow,
That so oft
Falls the knocker of my door
Neither loud nor soft,
But as long accustomed,
Listen, children:
Your father is dead.
From his old coats
I'll make you little jackets;
I'll make you little trousers
Man alive, that mournst thy lot,
Desiring what thou hast not got,
Money, beauty, love, what not;
Deeming it blesseder to be
I could not bring this splendid world nor any trading beast
In charge of it, to defer, no, not to give ear, not in the least
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
These wet rocks where the tide has been,
Barnacled white and weeded brown
And slimed beneath to a beautiful green,
Make bright the arrows
Gather the shields:
Conquest narrows
The peaceful fields.
Stock well the quiver
With arrows bright:
Butterflies are white and blue
In this field we wander through.
Suffer me to take your hand.
Death comes in a day or two.
(Vassar College, 1918)
O, loveliest throat of all sweet throats,
Where now no more the music is,
(He speaks, but to himself, being aware how it is with her)
Think not I have not heard.
Well-fanged the double word
Cut if you will, with Sleep's dull knife,
Each day to half its length, my friend,
The years that Time take off my life,
These hills, to hurt me more,
That am hurt already enough,
Having left the sea behind,
I, having loved ever since I was a child a few things, never having
wavered
My most Distinguished Guest and Learned Friend,
The pallid hare that runs before the day
Night is my sister, and how deep in love,
How drowned in love and weedily washed ashore,
No rose that in a garden ever grew,
In Homer's or in Omar's or in mine,
Though buried under centuries of fine
Not even my pride shall suffer much;
Not even my pride at all, maybe,
If this ill-timed, intemperate clutch
Not in a silver casket cool with pearls
Or rich with red corundum or with blue,
Locked, and the key withheld, as other girls
Aye, but she?
Your other sister and my other soul
Grave Silence, lovelier
Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?
Oh, my belovèd, have you thought of this:
How in the years to come unscrupulous Time,
Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give me back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,
Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
Death devours all lovely things;
Lesbia with her sparrow
Shares the darkness, presently
Every bed is narrow.
If it were only still!
With far away the shrill
Crying of a cock;
Or the shaken bell
From a cow's throat
Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
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
Be to her, Persephone,
All the things I might not be:
Take her head upon your knee.
She that was so proud and wild,
We were very tired, we were very merry --
We had gone back and forth all night upon the ferry.
For the sake of some things
That be now no more
I will strew rushes
On my chamber-floor,
I will plant bergamot
If I grow bitterly,
Like a gnarled and stunted tree,
Bearing harshly of my youth
Puckered fruit that sears the mouth;
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!
April this year, not otherwise
Than April of a year ago,
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Women have loved before as I love now;
At least, in lively chronicles of the past
Of Irish waters by a Cornish prow
Thou art not lovelier than lilacs, no,
Nor honeysuckle; thou art not more fair
Than small white single poppies, I can bear
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;
Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,
And all the flowers that in the springtime grow,
Not in this chamber only at my birth
When the long hours of that mysterious night
Were over, and the morning was in sight
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,
This door you might not open, and you did;
So enter now, and see for what slight thing
I'll keep a little tavern
Below the high hill's crest,
Wherein all grey-eyed people
May set them down and rest.
"Son," said my mother,
When I was knee-high,
"you've need of clothes to cover you,
and not a rag have I.
Ho, Giant!This is I!
I have built me a bean-stalk into your sky!
La, but it's lovely, up so high!
Oh, come, my lad, or go, my lad,
And love me if you like.
I shall not hear the door shut
Nor the knocker strike.
God had called us, and we came;
Our loved Earth to ashes left;
Heaven was a neighbor's house,
Open flung to us, bereft.
God had called us, and we came;
Our loved Earth to ashes left;
Heaven was a neighbor's house,
Open to us, bereft.
No, I will go alone.
I will come back when it's over.
Yes, of course I love you.
No, it will not be long.
Oh, lay my ashes on the wind
That blows across the sea.
And I shall meet a fisherman
Out of Capri,
And he will say, seeing me,
When reeds are dead and a straw to thatch the marshes,
And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind
Love, if I weep it will not matter,
And if you laugh I shall not care;
Foolish am I to think about it,
Set the foot down with distrust upon the crust of the
world it is thin.
Moles are at work beneath us; they have tunneled the
We talk of taxes, and I call you friend;
Well, such you are, -- but well enough we know
What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
When I too long have looked upon your face,
Wherein for me a brightness unobscured
I cannot but remember
When the year grows old --
October -- November --
How she disliked the cold!
When we are old and these rejoicing veins
Are frosty channels to a muted stream,
And out of all our burning their remains
Whereas at morning in a Jeweled Crown
I bit my fingers and was hard to please,
Having shook disaster till the fruit fell down
I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.
And what did I see I had not seen before?
She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
"Thin Rain, whom are you haunting,
That you haunt my door?"
Surely it is not I she's wanting;
Someone living here before
