Edna St. Vincent Millay: 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.

But the gnawing at my heart
He does not hear.

Edna St Vincent Millay: I think I should have loved you presently (Sonnet IX)

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 breast;
And all my pretty follies flung aside
That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,
Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,
Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.
I, that had been to you, had you remained,
But one more waking from a recurrent dream,
Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,
And walk your memory’s halls, austere, supreme,
A ghost in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or two.

Edna St. Vincent Millay: 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: Well, I have lost you

Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish—and men do—
I shall have only good to say of you.

Edna St. Vincent Millay: Grown Up

Was it for this I uttered prayers,
And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,
That now, domestic as a plate,
I should retire at half-past eight?

Edna St Vincent Millay: Three Songs of Shattering - I

 The first rose on my rose-tree

   Budded, bloomed, and shattered,

 During sad days when to me

           Nothing mattered.

 Grief of grief has drained me clean;

   Still it seems a pity

 No one saw, -- it must have been

           Very pretty.

Edna St Vincent Millay: An Ancient Gesture

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years,
Suddenly you burst into tears;

There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture - a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope...
Penelope, who really cried.

Edna St Vincent Millay: Sonnet: Love Is Not All

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 

and rise and sink and rise and sink again. 

Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath 

Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 

Yet many a man is making friends with death 

even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 

It well may be that in a difficult hour, 

pinned down by need and moaning for release 

or nagged by want past resolution's power, 

I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 

Or trade the memory of this night for food. 

It may well be. I do not think I would.