The Prisoner

All right,
Go ahead!
What's in a name?
I guess I'll be locked into
As much as I'm locked out of!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

No biography available

Edna St. Vincent Millay

To A Poet That Died Young

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Sonnets X

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Dirge

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Passer Mortuus Est

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

English

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

The Prisoner

I count the dismal time by months and years
Since last I felt the green sward under foot,
And the great breath of all things summer
Met mine upon my lips. Now earth appears
As strange to me as dreams of distant spheres
Or thoughts of Heaven we weep at. Nature's lute
Sounds on, behind this door so closely shut,
A strange wild music to the prisoner's ears,
Dilated by the distance, till the brain
Grows dim with fancies which it feels too
While ever, with a visionary pain,
Past the precluded senses, sweep and Rhine
Streams, forests, glades, and many a golden train
Of sunlit hills transfigured to Divine.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The Penitent

I had a little Sorrow,
    Born of a little Sin,
I found a room all damp with gloom
    And shut us all within;
And, "Little Sorrow, weep," said I,
    "And, Little Sin, pray God to die,
And I upon the floor will lie
    And think how bad I've been!"

Alas for pious planning--
    It mattered not a whit!
As far as gloom went in that room,
    The lamp might have been lit!
My little Sorrow would not weep,
    My little Sin would go to sleep--
To save my soul I could not keep
    My graceless mind on it!

So up I got in anger,
    And took a book I had,
And put a ribbon on my hair
    To please a passing lad,
And, "One thing there's no getting by--
I've been a wicked girl," said I;
"But if I can't be sorry, why,
    I...

Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Prisoner.

A Fragment.

In the dungeon-crypts idly did I stray,
Reckless of the lives wasting there away;
"Draw the ponderous bars! open, Warder stern!"
He dared not say me nay, the hinges harshly turn.

"Our guests are darkly lodged," I whisper'd, gazing through
The vault, whose grated eye showed heaven more gray than blue;
(This was when glad Spring laughed in awaking pride;)
"Ay, darkly lodged enough!" returned my sullen guide.

Then, God forgive my youth; forgive my careless tongue;
I scoffed, as the chill chains on the damp flagstones rung:
"Confined in triple walls, art thou so much to fear,
That we must bind thee down and clench thy fetters here?"

The captive raised her face; it was as soft and mild
As sculptured marble saint, or slumbering unwean'd chi...

Emily Bronte

The Prisoner

        From pacing, pacing without hope or quest
        He leaned against his window-bars to rest
        And smelt the breeze that crept up from the west.

        It came with sundown noises from the moors,
        Of milking time and loud-voiced rural chores,
        Of lumbering wagons and of closing doors.

        He caught a whiff of furrowed upland sweet,
        And certain scents stole up across the street
        That told him fireflies winked among the wheat.

        Over the dusk hill woke a new moon's light,
        Shadowed the woods and made the waters white,
        And watched above the quiet tents of night.

        Alas, that the old Mother should not know
        How ached his heart to be entreated so,
        Who heard her ca...

John Charles McNeill

The Philosopher

And what are you that, wanting you
    I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
    With weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you,
    As many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
    And looking at the wall?

I know a man that's a braver man
    And twenty men as kind,
And what are you, that you should be
    The one man in my mind?

Yet women's ways are witless ways,
    As any sage will tell,--
And what am I, that I should love
    So wisely and so well?

Edna St. Vincent Millay

A Prisoner

The hinges are so rusty
The door is fixed and fast;
The windows are so dusty
The sun looks in aghast:
Knock out the glass, I pray,
Or dash the door away,
Or break the house down bodily,
And let my soul go free!

George MacDonald