Second Fig

Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Dream

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Burial

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Prayer To Persephone

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Indifference

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.

Low-Tide

        These wet rocks where the tide has been,
            Barnacled white and weeded brown
        And slimed beneath to a beautiful green,
            These wet rocks where the tide went down
        Will show again when the tide is high
            Faint and perilous, far from shore,
        No place to dream, but a place to die,--
            The bottom of the sea once more.
        There was a child that wandered through
            A giant's empty house all day,--
        House full of wonderful things and new,
            But no fit place for a child to play.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Inland

        People that build their houses inland,
            People that buy a plot of ground
        Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
            Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

        Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
            Tons of water striking the shore,--
        What do they long for, as I long for
            One salt smell of the sea once more?

        People the waves have not awakened,
            Spanking the boats at the harbor's head,
        What do they long for, as I long for,--
            Starting up in my inland bed,

        Beating the narrow walls, and finding
            Neither a window nor a door,
        Screaming to God for death by drowning,--
            One salt taste of the sea once mor...

Edna St. Vincent Millay

First Fig

My candle burns at both ends;
    It will not last the night ;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
    It gives a lovely light!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sonnets V

        Once more into my arid days like dew,
        Like wind from an oasis, or the sound
        Of cold sweet water bubbling underground,
        A treacherous messenger, the thought of you
        Comes to destroy me; once more I renew
        Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found
        Long since to be but just one other mound
        Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew.
        And once again, and wiser in no wise,
        I chase your colored phantom on the air,
        And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise
        And stumble pitifully on to where,
        Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes,
        Once more I clasp,--and there is nothing there.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Afternoon On A Hill

    I will be the gladdest thing
        Under the sun!
    I will touch a hundred flowers
        And not pick one.

    I will look at cliffs and clouds
        With quiet eyes,
    Watch the wind bow down the grass,
        And the grass rise.

    And when lights begin to show
        Up from the town,
    I will mark which must be mine,
        And then start down!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sonnets VII

        When I too long have looked upon your face,
        Wherein for me a brightness unobscured
        Save by the mists of brightness has its place,
        And terrible beauty not to be endured,
        I turn away reluctant from your light,
        And stand irresolute, a mind undone,
        A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight
        From having looked too long upon the sun.
        Then is my daily life a narrow room
        In which a little while, uncertainly,
        Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,
        Among familiar things grown strange to me
        Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,
        Till I become accustomed to the dark.

Edna St. Vincent Millay