Sonnets (1923)

Edna St. Vincent Millay 1892 (Rockland) – 1950 (Austerlitz)



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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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 14, 2023

2:23 min read
205

Quick analysis:

Scheme AB C B C D E D E F G F G H IJ K K J I L L J M N M O M AP Q Q P P Q Q P R N R N R IF N N A F N O F H R G X H G
Closest metre Iambic trimeter
Characters 2,601
Words 478
Stanzas 21
Stanza Lengths 19, 2, 2, 2, 2, 19, 2, 2, 2, 2, 19, 2, 2, 2, 2, 19, 2, 2, 2, 2, 1

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet and playwright. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry, and was also known for her feminist activism more…

All Edna St. Vincent Millay poems | Edna St. Vincent Millay Books

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