Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay

From Second April

VII

When I too long have looked upon your face,

Wherein for me a brightness unobscured

Save by the mists of brightness has its place,

And terrible beauty not be endured,

I turn away reluctant from your light,

And stand irresolute, a mind undone,

A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight

From having looked too long upon the sun.

Then is my daily life a narrow room

In which a little while, uncertainly,

Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,

Among familiar things grown strange to me

Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,

Till I become accustomed to the dark.

VIII

And you as well must die, beloved dust,

And all your beauty stand you in no stead;

This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,

This body of flame and steel before the gust

Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,

Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead

Than the first leaf that fell, — this wonder fled,

Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.

Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.

In spite of all my love, you will arise

Upon that day and wander down the air

Obscurely as the unattended flower,

It mattering not how beautiful you were,

Or how belovèd above all else that dies.

Let you not say of me when I am old,

In pretty worship of my withered hands

Forgetting who I am, and how the sands

Of such a life as mine run red and gold

Even to the ultimate sifting dust, "Behold,

Here walketh passionless age!" — for there expands

A curious superstition in these lands,

And by its leave some weightless tales are told.

In me no lenten wicks watch out the night;

I am the booth where Folly holds her fair;

Impious no less in ruin than in strength,

When I lie crumbled to the earth at length,

Let you no say, "Upon this reverend site

The righteous groaned and beat their breasts in prayer."

Oh, my belovèd, have you thought of this:

How in the years to come unscrupulous Time,

More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss,

And make you old, and leave me in my prime?

How you and I, who scale together yet

A little while the sweet, immortal height

No pilgrim may remember or forget,

As sure as the world turns, some granite night

Shall lie awake and know the gracious flame

Gone out forever on the mutual stone;

And call to mind that on the day you came

I was a child, and you a hero grown? —

And the night pass, and the strange morning break

Upon our anguish for each other's sake!

As to some lovely temple, tenantless

Long since, that once was sweet with shivering brass,

Knowing well its altars ruined and the grass

Grown up between the stones, yet from excess

Of grief hard driven, or great loneliness,

The worshiper returns, and those who pass

Marvel him crying on a name that was, —

So is it now with me in my distress.

Your body was a temple to Delight;

Cold are its ashes whence the breath is fled;

Yet here one time you spirit was wont to move;

Here might hope to find you day or night;

And here I come to look for you, my love,

Even now, foolishly, knowing you are dead.

XII

Cherish you then the hope I shall forget

At length, my lord, Pieria? — put away

For your so passing sake, this mouth of clay,

These mortal bones against my body set,

For all the puny fever and frail sweat

Of human love, — renounce for these, I say,

The Singing Mountain's memory, and betray

The silent lyre that hangs upon me yet?

Ah, but indeed, some day shall you awake,

Rather, from dreams of me, that at your side

So many nights, a lover and a bride,

But stern in my soul's chastity, have lain,

To walk the world forever for my sake,

And in each chamber find me gone again!

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