To the Not Impossible Him

How shall I know, unless I go
    To Cairo and Cathay,
Whether or not this blessed spot
    Is blest in every way?

Now it may be, the flower for me
    Is this beneath my nose;
How shall I tell, unless I smell
    The Carthaginian rose?

The fabric of my faithful love
    No power shall dim or ravel
Whilst I stay here,--but oh, my dear,
    If I should ever travel!

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sonnet V

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Wild Swans

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Ashes Of Life

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

She Is Overheard Singing

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

English

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Journey

        Ah, could I lay me down in this long grass
        And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind
        Blow over me--I am so tired, so tired
        Of passing pleasant places!    All my life,
        Following Care along the dusty road,
        Have I looked back at loveliness and sighed;
        Yet at my hand an unrelenting hand
        Tugged ever, and I passed.    All my life long
        Over my shoulder have I looked at peace;
        And now I fain would lie in this long grass
        And close my eyes.
            Yet onward!
                        Cat birds call
        Through the long afternoon, and creeks at dusk
        Are guttural.    Whip-poor-wills wake and cry,
        Drawing the twilight close about their throats.
        Only my he...

Edna St. Vincent Millay

To S. M.

If he should lie a-dying

I am not willing you should go
Into the earth, where Helen went;
She is awake by now, I know.
Where Cleopatra's anklets rust
You will not lie with my consent;
And Sappho is a roving dust;
Cressid could love again; Dido,
Rotted in state, is restless still:
You leave me much against my will.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Travel

        The railroad track is miles away,
            And the day is loud with voices speaking,
        Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
            But I hear its whistle shrieking.

        All night there isn't a train goes by,
            Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming
        But I see its cinders red on the sky,
            And hear its engine steaming.

        My heart is warm with the friends I make,
            And better friends I'll not be knowing,
        Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
            No matter where it's going.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Invitation To The Voyage

It is a superb land, a country of Cockaigne, as they say, that I dream of visiting with an old friend. A strange land, drowned in our northern fogs, that one might call the East of the West, the China of Europe; a land patiently and luxuriously decorated with the wise, delicate vegetations of a warm and capricious phantasy.
A true land of Cockaigne, where all is beautiful, rich, tranquil, and honest; where luxury is pleased to mirror itself in order; where life is opulent, and sweet to breathe; from whence disorder, turbulence, and the unforeseen are excluded; where happiness is married to silence; where even the food is poetic, rich and exciting at the same time; where all things, my beloved, are like you.
Do you know that feverish malady that seizes hold of us in our cold miseries; that nostalgia of a land unknown; that anguis...

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Invitation To The Voyage

My sister, my child
Imagine how sweet
To live there as lovers do!
To kiss as we choose
To love and to die
In that land resembling you!
The misty suns
Of shifting skies
To my spirit are as dear
As the evasions
Of your eyes
That shine behind their tears.

There, all is order and leisure,
Luxury, beauty, and pleasure.

The tables would glow
With the lustre of years
To ornament our room.
The rarest of blooms
Would mingle their scents
With amber's vague perfume.
The ceilings, rich
The mirrors, deep
The splendour of the East
All whisper there
To the silent soul
Her sweet familiar speech.

There, all is order and leisure,
Luxury, beauty, and pleasure.

And these canals
Bear ships at ...

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Anima Mundi

Let all things vanish, if but you remain;
For if you stay, beloved, what is gone?
Yet, should you go, all permanence is vain,
And all the piled abundance is as none.

With you beside me in the desert sand,
Your smile upon me, and on mine your hand,
Oases green arise, and camel-bells;
For in the long adventure of your eyes
Are all the wandering ways to Paradise.

Existence, in your being, comes and goes;
What were the garden, love, without the rose?
In vain were ears to hear,
And eyes in vain,
Lacking your ordered music, sphere to sphere,
Blind, should your beauty blossom not again.

The pulse that shakes the world with rhythmic beat
Is but the passing of your little feet;
And all the singing vast of all the seas,
Down from the pole

Richard Le Gallienne