The problem with edna st vincent millay
Is that she’s so
preposterously good
And then just moments later, in the
Next stanza
So ungodly dry and textbook formal
One might even say, curiously boring.
She’s on fire for seventeen seconds,
But then grows cold, becomes calmed
Just biding her time.
Filling the spaces with rhymes, as if there’s
A limited number of
Amazing things to be said
By her. So she paces herself,
One miraculous reflection per poem.
In order to be famous, its best to avoid
(ahem) spooging her load
-------------------------------------------------
Stranger, pause and look;
From the dust of ages
Lift this little book,
Turn the tattered pages,
Read me, do not let me die!
Search the fading letters, finding
Steadfast in the broken binding
All that once was I !
- Edna St Vincent Millay (excerpt)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and look another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I’d started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood,
Over these things I could not see:
These were the things that bounded me..
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand!
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But, sure, the sky is big, I said:
Miles and miles above my head.
So here upon my back I”ll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and afer all,
The sky was not so very tall,
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop…
And--sure enough!--I see the top!
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
I screamed, and--lo!--Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest;
Bent back my arm upon my breast;
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of eternity.
I saw and heard, and know at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense,
That, sickening, I would fain pluck thence
But could not,--nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out,--Ah, fearful pawn:
For my omniscience paid I toll
In inifinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mind every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while, for ever grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire;
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each,--then mourned for all!
A man was starving in Capris;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore thorugh my throat.
No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine, pity like the pity of God.
Ah, awful weight! Infinity
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirt, like a bird,
Beatin against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered eath, but could not die.
Long had I lain thus, craving death,
When quietly the earth beneath
Gave way, and inch by inch, so great
At least had grown the crushing weight,
Into the earth I sank till I
Full sic feet under ground did lie,
And sank no more,--there is no weight
Can folow here, however great.
From ooff my breat I felt it roll,
And as it went my torturned soul
Burst forth and fled in such a gust
That all about me swirled the dust.
Deep in the earth I rested now.
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beaneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once, and over all
The pitying rain began to fall;
I lay and heard each pattering hoof
Upon my lowly, thatched roof,
And seemed to love the sound far more
Than ever I had done before.
For rain it had a friendly sound
To one who’s six feet under ground;
- Edna St Vincent Millay, from “Renascence”
Is that she’s so
preposterously good
And then just moments later, in the
Next stanza
So ungodly dry and textbook formal
One might even say, curiously boring.
She’s on fire for seventeen seconds,
But then grows cold, becomes calmed
Just biding her time.
Filling the spaces with rhymes, as if there’s
A limited number of
Amazing things to be said
By her. So she paces herself,
One miraculous reflection per poem.
In order to be famous, its best to avoid
(ahem) spooging her load
-------------------------------------------------
Stranger, pause and look;
From the dust of ages
Lift this little book,
Turn the tattered pages,
Read me, do not let me die!
Search the fading letters, finding
Steadfast in the broken binding
All that once was I !
- Edna St Vincent Millay (excerpt)
--------------------------------------------------------------------
All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and look another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I’d started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood,
Over these things I could not see:
These were the things that bounded me..
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand!
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But, sure, the sky is big, I said:
Miles and miles above my head.
So here upon my back I”ll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I looked, and afer all,
The sky was not so very tall,
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop…
And--sure enough!--I see the top!
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
I screamed, and--lo!--Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest;
Bent back my arm upon my breast;
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition on my mind,
Held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of eternity.
I saw and heard, and know at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense,
That, sickening, I would fain pluck thence
But could not,--nay! But needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out,--Ah, fearful pawn:
For my omniscience paid I toll
In inifinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of my sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mind every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while, for ever grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire;
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each,--then mourned for all!
A man was starving in Capris;
He moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore thorugh my throat.
No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
Mine, pity like the pity of God.
Ah, awful weight! Infinity
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirt, like a bird,
Beatin against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered eath, but could not die.
Long had I lain thus, craving death,
When quietly the earth beneath
Gave way, and inch by inch, so great
At least had grown the crushing weight,
Into the earth I sank till I
Full sic feet under ground did lie,
And sank no more,--there is no weight
Can folow here, however great.
From ooff my breat I felt it roll,
And as it went my torturned soul
Burst forth and fled in such a gust
That all about me swirled the dust.
Deep in the earth I rested now.
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beaneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once, and over all
The pitying rain began to fall;
I lay and heard each pattering hoof
Upon my lowly, thatched roof,
And seemed to love the sound far more
Than ever I had done before.
For rain it had a friendly sound
To one who’s six feet under ground;
- Edna St Vincent Millay, from “Renascence”