Poeticous Logo
en
English Español Français Italiano
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sonnets From an Ungrafted Tree

XLI
 
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 you body’s weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clairfy 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 ths frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

#AmericanWriters

Other works by Edna St. Vincent Millay...
Alms

My heart is what it was before, A house where people come and go; But it is winter with your love, The sashes are beset with snow. I light the lamp and lay the cloth…
Renascence

All I could see from where I stoo… Was three long mountains and a woo… I turned and looked another way, And saw three islands in a bay. So with my eyes I traced the line
Humoresque

“Heaven bless the babe!” they said… “What queer books she must have re… (Love, by whom I was beguiled, Grant I may not bear a child.) “Little does she guess to-day
Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting… So it is, and so it will be, for s… Into the darkness they go, the wis… With lilies and with laurel they g… Lovers and thinkers, into the eart…
 1
Whereas at Morning in a Jeweled Crown

Whereas at morning in a Jeweled C… I bit my fingers and was hard to p… Having shook disaster till the fru… I feel tonight more happy and at e… Feet running in the corridors, men…
The Courage That my Mother Had

The courage that my mother had Went with her, and is with her sti… Rock from New England quarried; Now granite in a granite hill. The golden brooch my mother wore
Wild Swans

I looked in my heart while the wil… And what did I see I had not seen… Only a question less or a question… Nothing to match the flight of wil… Tiresome heart, forever living and…
Ode to Silence

Aye, but she? Your other sister and my other sou… Grave Silence, lovelier Than the three loveliest maidens,… Clio, not you,
To Kathleen

Still must the poet as of old, In barren attic bleak and cold, Starve, freeze, and fashion verses… Such things as flowers and song an… Still as of old his being give
Sonnets 03: Not With Libations, But With Shouts and Laughter

Not with libations, but with shout… We drenched the altars of Love’s… Shaking to earth green fruits, imp… The launching of the colored moths… Love’s proper myrtle and his mothe…
Oh, my Belovèd, Have You Thought of This

Oh, my belovèd, have you thought… How in the years to come unscrupul… More cruel than Death, will tear… And make you old, and leave me in… How you and I, who scale together…
Thursday

And if I loved you Wednesday, Well, what is that to you? I do not love you Thursday - So much is true. And why you come complaining
Assault

I had forgotten how the frogs must… After a year of silence, else I t… I should not so have ventured fort… At dusk upon this unfrequented roa… I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will…
Inert Perfection

“Inert Perfection, let me chip yo… You cannot break it through with t… What if you broke it never, and it… You should not issue thence, shoul… Perfection in the egg, a fluid thi…
The Plaid Dress

Strong sun, that bleach The curtains of my room, can you n… Colourless this dress I wear?— This violent plaid Of purple angers and red shames; t…



Top