Edna St. Vincent Millay Poems

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,
...

And what are you that, wanting you,
I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
With weeping for your sake?
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I knew her for a little ghost
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high—higher than most—
And the green gate was locked.
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Time cannot break the bird's wing from the bird.
Bird and wing together
Go down, one feather.
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I do but ask that you be always fair
That I forever may continue kind;
Knowing me what I am, you should not dare
To lapse from beauty ever, nor seek to bind
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Women have loved before as I love now;
At least, in lively chronicles of the past—
Of Irish waters by a Cornish prow
Or Trojan waters by a Spartan mast
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I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.
And what did I see I had not seen before?
Only a question less or a question more:
Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.
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Be to her, Persephone,
All the things I might not be:
Take her head upon your knee.
She that was so proud and wild,
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Just a rainy day or two
In a windy tower,
That was all I had of you—
Saving half an hour.
...