Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay
From Fatal Interview
| X Strange thing that I, by nature nothing prone To fret the summer blossom on its stem, Who know the hidden nest, but leave alone The magic eggs, the bird that cuddles them, Should have no place till your bewildered heart Hung fluttering at the window of my breast, Till I had ravished to my bitter smart Your kiss from the stern moment, could not rest. "Swift wing, sweet blossom, live again in air! Depart, poor flower; poor feather you are free!" Thus do I cry, being teased by shame and care That beauty should be brought to terms by me; Yet shamed the more that in my heart I know, Cry as I may, I could not let you go. XI Not in the summer casket cool with pearls Or rich with red corundum or with blue, Locked, and key withheld, as other girls Have given their loves, I give my love to you; Not in a lovers'-know, not in a ring Worked in such fashion, and the legend plain — Semper fidelis, where a secret spring Kennels a drop of mischief for the brain: Love in the open hand, no thing but that, Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing not to hurt, As one should bring you cowslips in a hat Swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt, I bring to you, calling out as children do: "Look what I have! — And these are all for you." XII Olympian gods, mark now my bedside lamp Blown out; and be advised too late that he Whom you call sire is stolen into the camp Of warring Earth, and lies abed with me. Call out your golden hordes, the harm is done: Enraptured in his great embrace I lie; Shake heaven with spears, but I shall bear a son Branded with godhead, heel and brow and thigh. Whom think not to bedazzle or confound With meteoric splendours of display Of blackened moons or suns or the big sound Of sudden thunder on a silent day; Pain and compassion shall he know, being mine, — Confusion never, that is half divine. XIII I said, seeing how the winter gale increased, Even as waxed within us and grew strong The ancient tempest of desire, "At least, It is the season when the nights are long. Well flown, well shattered from the summer hedge The early sparrow and the opening flowers! — Late climbs the sun above the southerly edge These days, and sweet to love those added hours." Alas, already does the dark recede, And visible are the trees against the snow. Oh, monstrous parting, oh, perfidious deed, How shall I leave your side, how shall I go? . . . Unnatural night, the shortest of the year, Farewell! 'Tis dawn. The longest day is here. XIV Since of no creature living the last breath Is twice required, or twice the ultimate pain, Seeing how to quit your arms is very death, 'Tis likely that I shall not die again; And likely 'tis that Time whose gross decree Sends now the dawn to clamour at our door, Thus having done his evil worst to me, Will thrust me by, will harry me no more. When you are corn and roses and at rest I shall endure, a dense and sanguine ghost, To haunt the scene where I was happiest, To bend above the thing I loved the most; And rise, and wring my hands, and steal away As I do now, before the advancing day. XV My worship from this hour the Sparrow-Drawn Alone will cherish, and her arrowy child, Whose groves alone in the inquiring dawn Rise tranquil, and their altars undefiled. Seaward and shoreward smokes a plundered land To guard whose portals was my dear employ; Razed are its temples now; inviolate stand Only the slopes of Venus and her boy. How have I stripped me of immortal aid Save theirs alone, — who could endure to see Forsworn Aeneas with conspiring blade Sever the ship from shore (alas for me) And make no sign; who saw, and did not speak, The brooch of Troilus pinned upon the Greek. XVI I dreamed I moved among the Elysian fields, In converse with sweet women long since dead; And out of blossoms which that meadow yields I wove a garland for your living head. Danae, that was the vessel for a day Of golden Jove, I saw, and at her side, Whom Jove the Bull desired and bore away, Europa stood, and the Swan's featherless bride. All these were mortal women, yet all these Above the ground had had a god for guest; Freely I walked beside them and at ease, Addressing them, by them again addressed, And marvelled nothing, for remembering you, Wherefore I was among them well I knew. XVII Sweet love, sweet thorn, when lightly to my heart I took your thrust, whereby I since am slain, And lie disheveled in the grass apart, A sodden thing bedrenched by tears and rain, While rainy evening drips to misty night, And misty night to cloudy morning clears, And clouds disperse across the gathering light, And birds grow noisy, and the sun appears — Had I bethought me then, sweet love, sweet thorn, How sharp an anguish even at the best, When all's requited and the future's sworn, The happy hour can leave within the breast, I had not so come running at the call Of one who loves me little, if at all. XVIII Shall I be prisoner till my pulses stop To hateful Love and drag his noisy chain, And bait my need with sugared crusts that drop From jeweled fingers neither kind nor clean? — Mewed in an airless cavern where a toad Would grieve to snap his gnat and lay him down, While in the light along the rattling road Men shout and chaff and drive their wares to town? . . . Perfidious Prince, that keep me here confined, Doubt not I know the letters of my doom: How many a man has left his blood behind To buy his exit from this mournful room These evil stains record, these walls that rise Carved with his torment, steamy with his sighs. |
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