Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sonnets (1923)

VIII8.
  Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
.
  Give back my book and take my kiss instead.
.
  Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,
.
  “What a big book for such a little head!”
.
  Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
.
  And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink!
.
  Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.
.
  I never again shall tell you what I think.
.
  I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
.
 
 You will not catch me reading any more:
.
 
 I shall be called a wife to pattern by;
.
 
 And some day when you knock and push the door,
.
 
 Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
.
 
 I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me. IX9.
  Here is a wound that never will heal, I know,
.
  Being wrought not of a dearness and a death,
.
  But of a love turned ashes and the breath
.
  Gone out of beauty; never again will grow
.
  The grass on that scarred acre, though I sow
.
  Young seed there yearly and the sky bequeath
.
  Its friendly weathers down, far underneath
.
  Shall be such bitterness of an old woe.
.
  That April should be shattered by a gust,
.
 
 That August should be levelled by a rain,
.
 
 I can endure, and that the lifted dust
.
 
 Of man should settle to the earth again;
.
 
 But that a dream can die, will be a thrust
.
 
 Between my ribs forever of hot pain. XVIII18.
  I, being born a woman and distressed
.
  By all the needs and notions of my kind,
.
  Am urged by your propinquity to find
.
  Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
.
  To bear your body’s weight upon my breast:
.
  So subtly is the fume of life designed,
.
  To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
.
  And leave me once again undone, possessed.
.
  Think not for this, however, the poor treason
.
 
 Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
.
 
 I shall remember you with love, or season
.
 
 My scorn with pity,—let me make it plain:
.
 
 I find this frenzy insufficient reason
.
 
 For conversation when we meet again. XIX19.
  What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
.
  I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
.
  Under my head till morning; but the rain
.
  Is full of ghosts to-night, that tap and sigh
.
  Upon the glass and listen for reply,
.
  And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
.
  For unremembered lads that not again
.
  Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
.
  Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
.
 
 Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
.
 
 Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
.
 
 I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
.
 
 I only know that summer sang in me
.
 
 A little while, that in me sings no more.
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