The Merry Maid

Oh, I am grown so free from care
    Since my heart broke!
I set my throat against the air,
    I laugh at simple folk!

There's little kind and little fair
    Is worth its weight in smoke
To me, that's grown so free from care
    Since my heart broke!

Lass, if to sleep you would repair
    As peaceful as you woke,
Best not besiege your lover there
    For just the words he spoke
To me, that's grown so free from care
    Since my heart broke!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

No biography available

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sonnets V

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Passer Mortuus Est

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Sonnets XI

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Sonnet III

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.

Dirge

        Boys and girls that held her dear,
            Do your weeping now;
        All you loved of her lies here.

        Brought to earth the arrogant brow,
            And the withering tongue
        Chastened; do your weeping now.

        Sing whatever songs are sung,
            Wind whatever wreath,
        For a playmate perished young,

        For a spirit spent in death.
        Boys and girls that held her dear,
        All you loved of her lies here.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

The Dream

    Love, if I weep it will not matter,
        And if you laugh I shall not care;
    Foolish am I to think about it,
        But it is good to feel you there.

    Love, in my sleep I dreamed of waking,--
        White and awful the moonlight reached
    Over the floor, and somewhere, somewhere,
        There was a shutter loose,--it screeched!

    Swung in the wind,--and no wind blowing!--
        I was afraid, and turned to you,
    Put out my hand to you for comfort,--
        And you were gone!    Cold, cold as dew,

    Under my hand the moonlight lay!
        Love, if you laugh I shall not care,
    But if I weep it will not matter,--
        Ah, it is good to feel you there!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Alms

        My heart is what it was before,
            A house where people come and go;
        But it is winter with your love,
            The sashes are beset with snow.

        I light the lamp and lay the cloth,
            I blow the coals to blaze again;
        But it is winter with your love,
            The frost is thick upon the pane.

        I know a winter when it comes:
            The leaves are listless on the boughs;
        I watched your love a little while,
            And brought my plants into the house.

        I water them and turn them south,
            I snap the dead brown from the stem;
        But it is winter with your love,--
            I only tend and water them.

        There was a time I stood and watc...

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Macdougal Street

As I went walking up and down to take the evening air,
    (Sweet to meet upon the street, why must I be so shy?)
I saw him lay his hand upon her torn black hair;
    ("Little dirty Latin child, let the lady by!")

The women squatting on the stoops were slovenly and fat,
    (Lay me out in organdie, lay me out in lawn!)
And everywhere I stepped there was a baby or a cat;
    (Lord God in Heaven, will it never be dawn?)

The fruit-carts and clam-carts were ribald as a fair,
    (Pink nets and wet shells trodden under heel)
She had haggled from the fruit-man of his rotting ware;
    (I shall never get to sleep, the way I feel!)

He walked like a king through the filth and the clutter,
    (Sweet to meet upon the street, why did you glance me by?)
But he cau...

Edna St. Vincent Millay

When The Year Grows Old

    I cannot but remember
        When the year grows old--
    October--November--
        How she disliked the cold!

    She used to watch the swallows
        Go down across the sky,
    And turn from the window
        With a little sharp sigh.

    And often when the brown leaves
        Were brittle on the ground,
    And the wind in the chimney
        Made a melancholy sound,

    She had a look about her
        That I wish I could forget--
    The look of a scared thing
        Sitting in a net!

    Oh, beautiful at nightfall
        The soft spitting snow!
    And beautiful the bare boughs
        Rubbing to and fro!

    But the roaring of the fire,
        And the warmth of fur,
    And the ...

Edna St. Vincent Millay