Edna St. Vincent Millay (22 February 1892 – 19 October 1950 / Rockland / Maine / United States)
Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay : 7 / 165
And you as well must die, belovèd dust
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.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Submitted: Thursday, January 01, 2004
Read poems about / on: flower, beautiful, beauty, lost, death, love
Poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay : 7 / 165
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The best! No irony, no paradox here. Only the grieving, helpless loss of the almost unspeakably beautiful beloved - whom love cannot save.