Cherish you then the hope I shall forget (by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

photo of the poet by Carl Van Vechten (1933)

A Sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Second April (1921)

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!

* * *

   

As to some lovely temple, tenantless (by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

photo of the poet by Carl Van Vechten (1933)

A Sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Second April (1921)

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 your spirit was wont to move;
Here might I hope to find you day or night,
And here I come to look for you, my love,
Even now, foolishly, knowing you are dead.

* * *

   

Oh, my belovèd, have you thought of this (by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

photo of the poet by Carl Van Vechten (1933)

A Sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Second April (1921)

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!

* * *

   

Let you not say of me when I am old (by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

photo of the poet by Carl Van Vechten (1933)

A Sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Second April (1921)

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 not say, “Upon this reverend site
The righteous groaned and beat their breasts in prayer.”

* * *

   

And you as well must die, belovèd dust (by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

photo of the poet by Carl Van Vechten (1933)

A Sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Second April (1921)

And you as well must die, belovèd 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.

* * *

   

When I too long have looked upon your face (by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

photo of the poet by Carl Van Vechten (1933)

A Sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Second April (1921)

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 to 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.

* * *

   

No rose that in a garden ever grew (by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

photo of the poet by Carl Van Vechten (1933)

A Sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Second April (1921)

No rose that in a garden ever grew,
In Homer’s or in Omar’s or in mine,
Though buried under centuries of fine
Dead dust of roses, shut from sun and dew
Forever, and forever lost from view,
But must again in fragrance rich as wine
The grey aisles of the air incarnadine
When the old summers surge into a new.
Thus when I swear, “I love with all my heart,”
‘Tis with the heart of Lilith that I swear,
‘Tis with the love of Lesbia and Lucrece;
And thus as well my love must lose some part
Of what it is, had Helen been less fair,
Or perished young, or stayed at home in Greece.

* * *

   

Once more into my arid days like dew (by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

photo of the poet by Carl Van Vechten (1933)

A Sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Second April (1921)

Once more into my arid days like dew,
Like wind from an oasis, or the sound
Of cold sweet water bubbling underground,
A treacherous messenger, the thought of you
Comes to destroy me; once more I renew
Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found
Long since to be but just one other mound
Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.
And once again, and wiser in no wise,
I chase your coloured phantom on the air,
And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise
And stumble pitifully on to where,
Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes,
Once more I clasp,–and there is nothing there. 

* * *

   

Only until this cigarette is ended (by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

photo of the poet by Carl Van Vechten (1933)

A Sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Second April (1921)

Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu,–farewell!–the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The colour and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set.

* * *

   

Not with libations, but with shouts and laughter (by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

photo of the poet by Carl Van Vechten (1933)

A Sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay
from Second April (1921)

Not with libations, but with shouts and laughter
We drenched the altars of Love’s sacred grove,
Shaking to earth green fruits, impatient after
The launching of the coloured moths of Love.
Love’s proper myrtle and his mother’s zone
We bound about our irreligious brows,
And fettered him with garlands of our own,
And spread a banquet in his frugal house.
Not yet the god has spoken; but I fear
Though we should break our bodies in his flame,
And pour our blood upon his altar, here
Henceforward is a grove without a name,
A pasture to the shaggy goats of Pan,
Whence flee forever a woman and a man. 

* * *