Poems
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Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in 1892 in Rockland, Maine, the eldest of three daughters, and was encouraged by her mother to develop her talents for music and poetry. Her long poem "Renascence" won critical attention in an anthology contest in 1912 and secured for her a patron who enabled her to go to Vassar College. After graduating in 1917 she lived in Greenwich Village in New York for a few years, acting, writing satirical pieces for journals (usually under a pseudonym), and continuing to work at her poetry. She traveled in Europe throughout 1921-22 as a "foreign correspondent" for Vanity Fair. Her collection A Few Figs from Thistles (1920) gained her a reputation for hedonistic wit and cynicism, but her other collections (including the earlier Renascence and Other Poems [1917]) are without exception more seriously passionate or reflective. In 1923 she married Eugene Boissevain and -- after further travel -- embarked on a series of reading tours which helped to consolidate her nationwide renown. From 1925 onwards she lived at Steepletop, a farmstead in Austerlitz, New York, where her husband protected her from all responsibilities except her creative work. Often involved in feminist or political causes (including the Sacco-Vanzetti case of 1927), she turned to writing anti-fascist propaganda poetry in 1940 and further damaged a reputation already in decline. In her last years of her life she became more withdrawn and isolated, and her health, which had never been robust, became increasingly poor. She died in 1950.
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Poems - Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Poems
Sharp Ink Publishing
2024
Contact: info@sharpinkbooks.com
ISBN 9788028364847
Table of Contents
SECTION ONE
Renascence
God’s World
Afternoon on a Hill
Journey
Sorrow
Tavern
Ashes of Life
The Little Ghost
Kin to Sorrow
Three Songs of Shattering
I
II
III
The Shroud
The Dream
Indifference
Witch-Wife
Blight
When the Year Grows Old
Sonnets
I
II
III
IV
V
VI Bluebeard
SECTION TWO
I
II
Recuerdo
Thursday
To the Not Impossible Him
The Singing-Woman from the Wood’s Edge
Humoresque
She is Overheard Singing
The Unexplorer
Grown-Up
The Penitent
Daphne
Portrait by a Neighbour
The Merry Maid
To S. M.
The Philosopher
Four Sonnets
I
II
III
IV
SECTION THREE
Spring
City Trees
The Blue-Flag in the Bog
Eel-Grass
Elegy before Death
The Bean-Stalk
Weeds
Passer Mortuus Est
Pastoral
Assault
I
II
Travel
Low-Tide
Song of a Second April
The Poet and his Book
Alms
Inland
To a Poet that Died Young
Wraith
Ebb
Elaine
Burial
Mariposa
Doubt no more that Oberon
Lament
Exiled
The Death of Autumn
Ode to Silence
Memorial to D. C.
I Epitaph
II Prayer to Persephone
III Chorus
IV Elegy
V Dirge
Sonnets
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
Wild Swans
SECTION ONE
Table of Contents
Renascence
Table of Contents
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 for evermore.
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