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…
Posts published in “Edna St. Vincent Millay Poems”
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…
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 gustOf…
As to some lovely temple, tenantlessLong since, that once was sweet with shivering brass,Knowing well its altars ruined and the grassGrown up between the stones, yet from excessOf grief hard…
I I had forgotten how the frogs must soundAfter a year of silence, else I thinkI should not so have ventured forth aloneAt dusk upon this unfrequented road. II I…
**, 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 putHere my knee, there my foot,Up and up,…
Give me truths,For I am weary of the surfaces,And die of inanition. If I knewOnly the herbs and simples of the wood,Rue, cinquefoil, gill, vervain, and pimpernel,Blue-vetch, and trillium, hawkweed,…
*** had called us, and we came; Our loved Earth to ashes left;Heaven was a neighbor’s house, Open to us, bereft. *** the lights of Heaven showed, And ’twas *** who walked ahead;Yet…
Give away her gowns,Give away her shoes;She has no more useFor her fragrant gowns;Take them all down,Blue, green, blue,Lilac, pink, blue,From their padded hangers;She will dance no moreIn her narrow…
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…
Why do you follow me?—Any moment I can beNothing but a laurel-tree. Any moment of the chaseI can leave you in my placeA pink bough for your embrace. Yet if…
When reeds are dead and a straw to thatch the marshes,And feathered pampas-grass rides into the windLike aged warriors westward, tragic, thinnedOf half their tribe, and over the flattened rushes,Stripped…
Knows he who tills this lonely fieldTo reap its scanty corn,What mystic fruit his acres yieldAt midnight and at morn? In the long sunny afternoon,The plain was full of ghosts,I…
I know what my heart is like Since your love died:It is like a hollow ledgeHolding a little pool Left there by the tide, A little tepid pool,Drying inward from the edge.
No matter what I say, All that I really loveIs 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…
Too proud to die; broken and blind he diedThe darkest way, and did not turn away,A cold kind man brave in his narrow pride On that darkest day. Oh, forever mayHe…
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…
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.
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,…
Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,And drag me at your chariot till I die,—Oh, heavy prince! O, panderer of hearts!—Yet hear me tell how in their throats…
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…
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…
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…
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 neighbor in a subway train,How…
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…