Burial

        Mine is a body that should die at sea!
            And have for a grave, instead of a grave
        Six feet deep and the length of me,
            All the water that is under the wave!

        And terrible fishes to seize my flesh,
            Such as a living man might fear,
        And eat me while I am firm and fresh,--
            Not wait till I've been dead for a year!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sonnets III

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

The Dream

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

The Merry Maid

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Dirge

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Elegy Before Death

        There will be rose and rhododendron
            When you are dead and under ground;
        Still will be heard from white syringas
            Heavy with bees, a sunny sound;

        Still will the tamaracks be raining
            After the rain has ceased, and still
        Will there be robins in the stubble,
            Brown sheep upon the warm green hill.

        Spring will not ail nor autumn falter;
            Nothing will know that you are gone,
        Saving alone some sullen plough-land
            None but yourself sets foot upon;

        Saving the may-weed and the pig-weed
            Nothing will know that you are dead,--
        These, and perhaps a useless wagon
            Standing beside some tumbled shed.

 ...

Edna St. Vincent Millay

A Burial At Sea.

The shore hath blent with the distant skies,
O'er the bend of the crested seas,
And the leaning ship in her pathway flies,
On the sweep of the freshened breeze.

Swift be its flight! for a dying guest
It bears across the billow,
And she fondly sighs in her native West
To find a peaceful pillow.

There, o'er the tide, her kindred sleep,
And she would sleep beside them
It may not be! for the sea is deep,
And the waves the waves divide them!

It may not be! for the flush is flown,
That lighted her lily cheek
'Twas the passing beam, ere the sun goes down.
Life's last and loveliest streak.

'Tis gone, and a dew is o'er her now
The dew of the mornless eve
No morrow will shine on that pallid brow,
For the spirit hath ta'en its leave...

Samuel Griswold Goodrich

The Poet And His Book

        Down, you mongrel, Death!
            Back into your kennel!
        I have stolen breath
            In a stalk of fennel!
        You shall scratch and you shall whine
            Many a night, and you shall worry
            Many a bone, before you bury
        One sweet bone of mine!

        When shall I be dead?
            When my flesh is withered,
        And above my head
            Yellow pollen gathered
        All the empty afternoon?
            When sweet lovers pause and wonder
            Who am I that lie thereunder,
        Hidden from the moon?

        This my personal death?--
            That lungs be failing
        To inhale the breath
            Others are exhaling?
        This my subtle spirit...

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Passer Mortuus Est

        Death devours all lovely things;
            Lesbia with her sparrow
        Shares the darkness,--presently
            Every bed is narrow.

        Unremembered as old rain
            Dries the sheer libation,
        And the little petulant hand
            Is an annotation.

        After all, my erstwhile dear,
            My no longer cherished,
        Need we say it was not love,
            Now that love is perished?

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Elegy

        Let them bury your big eyes
        In the secret earth securely,
        Your thin fingers, and your fair,
        Soft, indefinite-colored hair,--
        All of these in some way, surely,
        From the secret earth shall rise;
        Not for these I sit and stare,
        Broken and bereft completely;
        Your young flesh that sat so neatly
        On your little bones will sweetly
        Blossom in the air.

        But your voice,--never the rushing
        Of a river underground,
        Not the rising of the wind
        In the trees before the rain,
        Not the woodcock's watery call,
        Not the note the white-throat utters,
        Not the feet of children pushing
        Yellow leaves along the gutters
  ...

Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Happy Corpse

In a rich land, fertile, replete with snails
I'd like to dig myself a spacious pit
Where I might spread at leisure myoid bones
And sleep unnoticed, like a shark at sea.

I hate both testaments and epitaphs;
Sooner than beg remembrance from the world
I would, alive, invite the hungry crows
To bleed my tainted carcass inch by inch.

O worms! dark playmates minus ear or eye,
Prepare to meet a free and happy corpse;
Droll philosophies, children of rottenness,

Go then along my ruin guiltlessly,
And say if any torture still exists
For this old soulless corpse, dead with the dead!

Charles Baudelaire