Edna St. Vincent Millay

“Who's that knocking on my grave and will not let me sleep, a year has one”

“Gone, gone again is Summer the lovely. She that knew not where to hide,Is gone again like a jeweled fish from the hand, Is lost on every side.Mute,mute, I make way to the garden, Thither where she last was seen;The heavy foot of the frost is on the flags there, Where her light step has been. Gone, gone again is Summer the lovely,Gone again on every side,Lost again like a shining fish from the hand Into the shadowy tide.”

“The younger generation forms a country of its own.”

“So come on out, my dear old sweet Sister, - & we'll open our oysters together.”

“A infância não vai do nascimento até certa idade,e a certa altura a criança está crescida,deixando de lado as coisas de criança.A infância é o reino onde ninguém morre.”

“I would I were alive again to kiss the fingers of the rain.”

“Take up the song; forget the epitaph.”

“Life must go on; I forget just why.”

“SHE is neither pink nor pale, And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine. She has more hair than she needs; In the sun ’tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea. She loves me all that she can, And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine.”

“I do not think there is a woman in whom the roots of passion shoot deeper than in me.”

“Parrots, tortoises and redwoods live a longer life than men do; Men a longer life than dogs do; Dogs a longer life than love does.”

“Degraded bird, I give you back your eyes forever, ascend now whither you are tossed;Forsake this wrist, forsake this rhyme;Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost,But climb.”

“Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies.”

“... but the rainIs full of ghosts tonight”

“How first you knew me in a book I wrote,How first you loved me for a written line”

“I will come back to you, I swear I will;And you will know me still.I shall be only a little tallerThan when I went.”

“A wind with a wolf's headHowled about our door,And we burned up the chairsAnd sat upon the floor.”

“Tea was sucha comfort.”

“You are loved. If so, what else matters?”

“But you, you foolish girl, you have gone home to a leaky castle across the sea to lie awake in linen smelling of lavender, and hear the nightingale, and long for me.”

“But she was not made for any man, and she will never be all mine.”

“To a Young PoetTime cannot break the bird's wing from the bird.Bird and wing togetherGo down, one feather.No thing that ever flew,Not the lark, not you,Can die as others do.”

“Ah, drink againThis river that is the taker-away of pain,And the giver-back of beauty!In these cool wavesWhat can be lost?--Only the sorry costOf the lovely thing, ah, never the thing itself!The level flood that lavesThe hot browAnd the stiff shoulderIs at our temples now.Gone is the fever,But not into the river;Melted the frozen pride,But the tranquil tideRuns never the warmer for this,Never the colder.Immerse the dream.Drench the kiss.Dip the song in the stream.”

“The first rose on my rose-tree Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me Nothing mattered. Grief of grief has drained me clean; Still it seems a pity No one saw,—it must have been Very pretty.”

“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.”

“But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach,And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling,The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake,Broad field, bright flower, and the long white roadA gateless garden, and an open path:My feet to follow, and my heart to hold.”

“Ah, I could lay me down in this long grassAnd close my eyes, and let the quiet windBlow over me”

“A ghost in marble of a girl you knewWho would have loved you in a day or two.”

“But you were something more than young and sweetAnd fair, - and the long year remembers you.”

“But the roaring of the fire,And the warmth of fur,And the boiling of the kettleWere beautiful to her!”

“And her voice is a string of colored beads,Or steps leading into the sea.”

“She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,And her mouth on a valentine.”

“Strange how few, After all’s said and done, the things that areOf moment. Few indeed! When I can make Of ten small words a rope to hang the world! “I had you and I have you now no more.” There, there it dangles,—where’s the little truth That can for long keep footing under thatWhen its slack syllables tighten to a thought? Here, let me write it down! I wish to see Just how a thing like that will look on paper! “I had you and I have you now no more.”

“About the trees my arms I wound;Like one going mad I hugged the ground;I raised my quivering arms on high;I laughed and laughed into the sky.”

“I would I were alive againTo kiss the fingers of the rain,To drink into my eyes the shineOf every slanting silver line,To catch the freshened, fragrant breezeFrom drenched and dripping apple-trees.For soon the shower will be done,And then the broad face of the sunWill laugh above the rain-soaked earthUntil the world with answering mirthShakes joyously, and each round dropRolls twinkling, from its grass-blade top.”

“I saw and heard, and knew at lastThe How and Why of all things, past,and present, and forevermore.”

“Now goes under, and I watch it go under, the sunThat will not rise again.Today has seen the setting, in your eyes cold and senseless as the sea,Of friendship better than bread, and of bright charityThat lifts a man a little above the beasts that run.That this could be!That I should live to seeMost vulgar Pride, that stale obstreperous clown,So fitted out with purple robe and crownTo stand among his betters! Face to faceWith outraged me in this once holy place,Where Wisdom was a favoured guest and huntedTruth was harboured out of danger,He bulks enthroned, a lewd, an insupportable stranger!I would have sworn, indeed I swore it:The hills may shift, the waters may decline,Winter may twist the stem from the twig that bore it,But never your love from me, your hand from mine.Now goes under the sun, and I watch it go under.Farewell, sweet light, great wonder!You, too, farewell,-but fare not well enough to dreamYou have done wisely to invite the night before the darkness came.”

“Night falls fast. Today is in the past.”

“And all at once the heavy nightFell from my eyes and I could see, --A drenched and dripping apple-tree,A last long line of silver rain,A sky grown clear and blue again.And as I looked a quickening gustOf wind blew up to me and thrustInto my face a miracleOf orchard-breath, and with the smell, --I know not how such things can be! --I breathed my soul back into me.Ah! Up then from the ground sprang IAnd hailed the earth with such a cryAs is not heard save from a manWho has been dead, and lives again.About the trees my arms I wound;Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;I raised my quivering arms on high;I laughed and laughed into the sky”

“Second FigSafe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!”

“The sky, I thought, is not so grand;I 'most could touch it with my hand!And reaching up my hand to try,I screamed to feel it touch the sky.”

“Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I And hailed the earth with such a cry As is not heard save from a man Who has been dead, and lives again. About the trees my arms I wound; Like one gone mad I hugged the ground; I raised my quivering arms on high; I laughed and laughed into the sky...”

“This book, when I am dead, will beA little faint perfume of me.People who knew me well will say,She really used to think that way.”

“koodaki ghalamroe padshahii ast ke hich kas dar an nakhahad mord”

“To Those Without PityCruel of heart, lay down my song.Your reading eyes have done me wrong.Not for you was the pen bitten,And the mind wrung, and the song written.”

“Lost in Hell,-Persephone,Take her head upon your knee;Say to her, "My dear, my dear,It is not so dreadful here.”

“Stranger, pause and look;From the dust of agesLift this little book,Turn the tattered pages,Read me, do not let me die!Search the fading letters findingSteadfast in the broken bindingAll that once was I!”

“For my omniscience paid I tollIn infinite remorse of soul.All sin was of my sinning, allAtoning mine, and mine the gallOf all regret. Mine was the weightOf every brooded wrong, the hateThat stood behind each envious thrust,Mine every greed, mine every lust.And all the while for every grief,Each suffering, I craved reliefWith individual desire, –Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fireAbout a thousand people crawl;Perished with each, — then mourned for all!”

“When you are corn and roses and at restI shall endure, a dense and sanguine ghostTo haunt the scene where I was happiestTo bend above the thing I loved the most”

“Was it for this I uttered prayers,And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,That now, domestic as a plate,I should retire at half-past eight?”