Collected Poems Read online

  Collected Poems

  EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

  Edited by Norma Millay

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Foreword

  From Renascence

  Renascence

  Interim

  The Suicide

  God’s World

  Afternoon on a Hill

  Sorrow

  Tavern

  Ashes of Life

  The Little Ghost

  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

  The Dream

  Indifference

  Witch-Wife

  Blight

  When the Year Grows Old

  From Second April

  Spring

  City Trees

  The Blue-Flag in the Bog

  Journey

  Eel-Grass

  Elegy Before Death

  The Bean-Stalk

  Weeds

  Passer Mortuus Est

  Pastoral

  Assault

  Travel

  Low-Tide

  Song of a Second April

  Rosemary

  The Poet and His Book

  Alms

  Inland

  To a Poet that Died Young

  Wraith

  Ebb

  Elaine

  Burial

  Mariposa

  The Little Hill

  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. Dirge

  V. Elegy

  Wild Swans

  From A Few Figs from Thistles

  First Fig

  Second Fig

  Recuerdo

  Thursday

  To the Not Impossible Him

  Macdougal Street

  The Singing-Woman from the Wood’s Edge

  She Is Overheard Singing

  The Unexplorer

  Grown-up

  The Penitent

  Daphne

  Portrait by a Neighbour

  Midnight Oil

  The Merry Maid

  To Kathleen

  To S.M.

  The Philosopher

  From The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems

  My Heart, Being Hungry

  Autumn Chant

  Nuit Blanche

  Three Songs from “The Lamp and the Bell”

  I. Oh, little rose tree, bloom

  II. Beat me a crown of bluer metal

  III. Rain comes down

  The Wood Road

  Feast

  Souvenir

  Scrub

  The Goose-Girl

  The Dragonfly

  Departure

  The Return from Town

  A Visit to the Asylum

  The Spring and the Fall

  The Curse

  Keen

  The Betrothal

  Humoresque

  The Pond

  The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver

  Never May the Fruit Be Plucked

  The Concert

  Hyacinth

  To One Who Might Have Borne a Message

  Siege

  The Cairn

  Spring Song

  Memory of Cape Cod

  From The Buck in the Snow

  Moriturus

  Song

  To the Wife of a Sick Friend

  The Bobolink

  The Hawkweed

  To a Friend Estranged from Me

  The Road to Avrillé

  For Pao-Chin, a Boatman on the Yellow Sea

  Northern April

  There at Dusk I Found You

  Being Young and Green

  Mist in the Valley

  The Hardy Garden

  The Pigeons

  The Buck in the Snow

  The Anguish

  Justice Denied in Massachusetts

  Hangman’s Oak

  Wine from These Grapes

  To Those Without Pity

  Dawn

  To a Young Girl

  Evening on Lesbos

  Dirge Without Music

  Memory of Cassis

  Portrait

  Winter Night

  The Cameo

  Counting-out Rhyme

  The Plum Gatherer

  West Country Song

  Pueblo Pot

  When Caesar Fell

  Lethe

  On First Having Heard the Skylark

  To a Musician

  From Poems Selected for Young People

  From a Very Little Sphinx

  I. Come along in then, little girl

  II. Oh, burdock, and you other dock

  III. Everybody but just me

  IV. I know a hundred ways to die

  V. Look, Edwin! Do you see that boy

  VI. All the grown-up people say

  VII. Wonder where this horseshoe went

  From Wine from These Grapes

  The Return

  October—An Etching

  Autumn Daybreak

  The Oak-Leaves

  The Fledgling

  The Hedge of Hemlocks

  Cap D’ Antibes

  From a Train Window

  The Fawn

  Valentine

  In the Grave No Flower

  Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies

  The Solid Sprite Who Stands Alone

  Spring in the Garden

  Sonnet

  Aubade

  Sappho Crosses the Dark River into Hades

  Epitaph

  On Thought in Harness

  Desolation Dreamed Of

  The Leaf and the Tree

  On the Wide Heath

  My Spirit, Sore from Marching

  Conscientious Objector

  Apostrophe to Man

  Above These Cares

  If Still Your Orchards Bear

  Lines for a Grave-Stone

  How Naked, How Without a Wall

  From Huntsman, What Quarry?

  The Ballad of Chaldon Down

  The Princess Recalls Her One Adventure

  Short Story

  Pretty Love, I Must outlive You

  English Sparrows

  Impression: Fog Off the Coast of Dorset

  The Rabbit

  Song for Young Lovers in a City

  To a Calvinist in Bali

  Thanksgiving Dinner

  The Snow Storm

  Huntsman, What Quarry?

  Not So Far as the Forest

  I. That chill is in the air

  II. Branch by branch

  III. Distressed mind, forbear

  IV. Not dead of wounds, not borne

  V. Poor passionate thing

  Rendezvous

  The Fitting

  What Savage Blossom

  Menses

  The Plaid Dress

  “Fontaine, Je Ne Bourai Pas De Ton Eau!”

  Intention to Escape from Him

  To a Young Poet

  Modern Declaration

  The Road to the Past

  The True Encounter

  Theme and Variations

  I. Not even my pride will suffer much

  II. Heart, do not bruise the breast

  III. Rolled in the trough of thick desire

  IV. And do you think that love itself

  V. I had not thought so tame a thing

  VI. Leap now into
this quiet grave

  VII. Now from a stout and more imperious day

  VIII. The time of year ennobles you

  To Elinor Wylie

  I. Song for a Lute (2927)

  II. For you there is no song (1928)

  III. Sonnet in Answer to a Question (1838)

  IV. Nobody now throughout the pleasant day

  V. Gone over to the enemy now

  VI. Over the Hollow Land

  Inert Perfection

  Say that We Saw Spain Die

  Underground System

  Two Voices

  Mortal Flesh, Is Not Your Place in the Ground?

  No Earthly Enterprise

  Lines Written in Recapitulation

  This Dusky Faith

  Truce for a Moment

  From Make Bright the Arrows

  To the Maid of Orleans

  Memory of England (October 1940)

  Poems which have not appeared in any of the previous volumes

  The Pear Tree

  Tree Ceremonies

  Druids’ Chant

  Song of the Nations

  Baccalaureate Hymn (with facsimile of Original Broadside)

  Invocation to the Muses

  To S.V.B.—June 15, 1940

  If, in the Foggy Aleutians

  Poem and Prayer for an Invading Army

  Christmas Canticle

  We have gone too far

  Deep in the muck of unregarded doom

  The Animal Ball

  Through the Green Forest

  As sharp as in my childhood

  By goodness and by evil so surrounded

  At least, my dear

  From Mine the Harvest

  Small Hands, Relinquish All

  Ragged Island

  To whom the house of Montagu was neighbour

  This is mine, and I can hold it

  Of what importance, O my lovely girls, my dancers

  Few come this way

  The Strawberry Shrub

  When It Is Over

  The courage that my mother had

  Wild-cat, gnat and I

  This should be simple; if one’s power were great

  Song

  New England Spring, 1942

  Here in a Rocky Cup

  How innocent we lie

  Armenonville

  Tristan

  I. Put it down! I say

  II. I still can see

  III. There were herbs strown

  IV. Heavily on the faithful bulk of Kurvenal

  Dream of Saba

  Who hurt you so

  When the tree-sparrows with no sound

  Amorphous is the mind

  For Warmth Alone, for Shelter Only

  The Agnostic

  The apple-trees bud, but I do not

  Black hair you’d say she had

  Cave Canem

  An Ancient Gesture

  Jesus to His Disciples

  Establishment is shocked

  Some Things Are Dark

  If it should rain

  The Parsi Woman

  Journal

  The sea at sunset can reflect

  I, in disgust with the living

  How did I bear it

  Men Working

  Steepletop

  I. Even you, Sweet Basil

  II. Nothing could stand all this rain

  III. Borage, forage for bees

  The Gardener in Haying-Time

  Sky-coloured bird

  To a Snake

  I woke in the night and heard the wind

  Look how the bittersweet

  Truck-Garden Market-Day

  Intense and terrible, I think, must be the loneliness

  Sometimes, oh, often, indeed

  Not for a Nation

  Sonnets

  From Renascence

  Thou art not lovelier than lilacs,—no

  Time does not bring relief; you all have lied

  Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring

  Not in this chamber only at my birth

  If I should learn, in some quite casual way

  This door you might not open, and you did

  From A Few Figs from Thistles

  I do but ask that you be always fair

  Love, though for this you riddle me with darts

  I think I should have loved you presently

  Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!

  I shall forget you presently, my dear

  From Second April

  We talk of taxes, and I call you friend

  Into the golden vessel of great song

  Not with libations, but with shouts and laughter

  Only until this cigarette is ended

  Once more into my arid days like dew

  No rose that in a garden ever grew

  When I too long have looked upon your face

  And you as well must die, beloved dust

  Let you not say of me when I am old

  Oh, my beloved, have you thought of this

  As to some lovely temple, tenantless

  Cherish you then the hope I shall forget

  From The Harp-Weaver

  When you, that at this moment are to me

  That Love at length should find me out and bring

  Love is not blind. I see with single eye

  I know I am but summer to your heart

  I pray you if you love me, bear my joy

  Pity me not because the light of day

  Sometimes when I am wearied suddenly

  Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!

  Here is a wound that never will heal, I know

  I shall go back again to the bleak shore

  Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find