



Produced by Alan Light.  HTML version by Al Haines.









Renascence and Other Poems


by

Edna St. Vincent Millay




  Contents:



  Renascence
       All I could see from where I stood

  Interim
       The room is full of you!--As I came in

  The Suicide
       "Curse thee, Life, I will live with thee no more!

  God's World
       O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!

  Afternoon on a Hill
       I will be the gladdest thing

  Sorrow
       Sorrow like a ceaseless rain

  Tavern
       I'll keep a little tavern

  Ashes of Life
       Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;

  The Little Ghost
       I knew her for a little ghost

  Kin to Sorrow
       Am I kin to Sorrow,

  Three Songs of Shattering

  I
       The first rose on my rose-tree

  II
       Let the little birds sing;

  III
       All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree!

  The Shroud
       Death, I say, my heart is bowed

  The Dream
       Love, if I weep it will not matter,

  Indifference
       I said,--for Love was laggard, O, Love was slow to come,--

  Witch-Wife
       She is neither pink nor pale,

  Blight
       Hard seeds of hate I planted

  When the Year Grows Old
       I cannot but remember

  Sonnets

  I
       Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,--no,

  II
       Time does not bring relief; you all have lied

  III
       Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,

  IV
       Not in this chamber only at my birth--

  V
       If I should learn, in some quite casual way,

  VI     Bluebeard
       This door you might not open, and you did;




  Renascence and Other Poems




  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 forevermore.
  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, thatched 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 underground;
  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-colored, 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 mag