Second April

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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Journey

AH, could I lay me down in this long grass

And close my eyes, and let the quite 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, as I passed. All my life long

Over my shoulder have I looked at peace;

And now I would fain lie in this long grass

And close my eyes.

        Yet Onward!

                                  Cat-birds call

Through the long afternoon, and creeks at dusk

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

Drawing the twilight close about their throats.

Only my heart makes answer. Eager vines

Go up the r7ocks 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 dissappear.

Only my heart, only my heat 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 behold.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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 on the beach

At the tide-line, and the trace

Of higher tides along the beach:

Nothing in this place.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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 dpring 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 blessèd things,

The blood too bright, the brow accurst.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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,

Just because it perished?

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Assault

I HAD forgotten how the frogs must sound

After a year of silence, else I think

I should not have ventured forth alone

At dusk along this unfrequented road.

I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk

Between me and the crying of the frogs?

Oh, saavage Beauty, suffer me to pass,

That am a timid woman, on her way

From one house to another!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Song of a Second April

APRIL this year, not otherwise

Than April of a year ago

Is full of whispers, full of sighs,

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;

From orchards near and far away

The gray wood-pecker 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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Rosemary

FOR the sake of some things

That be now no more

I will strew rushes

On my chamber-floor,

I will plant bergamot

At my kitchen-door.

For the sake of dim things

That were once so plain

I will set a barrel

Out to catch the rain,

I will hang an iron pot

on an iron crane.

Many things be dead and gone

That were brave and gay;

For the sake of these things

I will learn to say,

"An it please you, gentle sirs,"

"Alack! and "Well-a-day!"

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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,

And 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;

Today I reach around the door

And set the 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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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 harbor'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?

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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 em 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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Death of Autumn

WHEN reeds are dead and straw to thatch the marshes,

And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind

Like Agèd warriors westward, tragic, thinned

Of half their tribe; an 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?

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Into the Golden Vessel

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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Once More Into My Arid Days

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 is no wise,

I chase your colored 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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

When I Too Long Have Looked Upon Your Face

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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Only until this cigarette is ended...

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.

Edna St. Vincent Millay