Weeds

        White with daisies and red with sorrel
            And empty, empty under the sky!--
        Life is a quest and love a quarrel--
            Here is a place for me to lie.

        Daisies spring from damned seeds,
            And this red fire that here I see
        Is a worthless crop of crimson weeds,
            Cursed by farmers thriftily.

        But here, unhated for an hour,
            The sorrel runs in ragged flame,
        The daisy stands, a bastard flower,
            Like flowers that bear an honest name.

        And here a while, where no wind brings
            The baying of a pack athirst,
        May sleep the sleep of blessed things,
            The blood too bright, the brow accurst.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

No biography available

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Ode To Silence

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Sonnets XII

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

To A Poet That Died Young

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Simple Poetry

Sonnets VI

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.

Foreword To Weeds By The Wall

In the first rare spring of song,
In my heart's young hours,
In my youth 't was thus I sang,
Choosing 'mid the flowers: - 

"Fair the Dandelion is,
But for me too lowly;
And the winsome Violet
Is, forsooth, too holy.
'But the Touchmenot?' Go to!
What! a face that's speckled
Like a common milking-maid's,
Whom the sun hath freckled.
Then the Wild-Rose is a flirt;
And the trillium Lily,
In her spotless gown, 's a prude,
Sanctified and silly.
By her cap the Columbine,
To my mind, 's too merry;
Gossips, I would sooner wed
Some plebeian Berry.
And the shy Anemone -
Well, her face shows sorrow;
Pale, goodsooth! alive to-day,
Dead and gone to-morrow.
Then that bold-eyed, buxom wench,
Big and blond and lazy, -<...

Madison Julius Cawein

Spring
To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots,
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Blight
Hard seeds of hate I planted
That should by now be grown,--
Rough stalks, and from thick stamens
A poisonous pollen blown,
And odors rank, unbreathable,
From dark corollas thrown!

At dawn from my damp garden
I shook the chilly dew;
The thin boughs locked behind me
That sprang to let me through;
The blossoms slept,--I sought a place
Where nothing lovely grew.

And there, when day was breaking,
I knelt and looked around:
The light was near, the silence
Was palpitant with sound;
I drew my hate from out my breast
And thrust it in the ground.

Oh, ye so fiercely tended,
Ye little seeds of hate!
I bent above ...
Edna St. Vincent Millay

Merrill's Garden
There is a garden where the seeded stems of thin long grass are bowed
Beneath July's slow rains and heat and tired children's trailing feet;
And the trees' neglected branches droop and make a cloud beneath the cloud,
And in that dark the crimson dew of raspberries shines more sweet than sweet.

The flower of the tall acacia's gone, the acacia's flower is white no more,
The aspen lifts his pithless arms, the aspen leaves are close and still;
The wind that tossed the clouds along, gray clouds and white like feathers bore,
Lets even a feather faintly fall and smoke spread hugely where it will.

But though the acacia's flower is gone and raspberries bear bright fruit untasted,
Beauty lives there, oh rich and rare, past the sum of eager June.
The lime tree's pyramid of flower and leaf...
John Frederick Freeman

Weed Or Flower
"'Tis but a common thing," one coldly said,
"Nay, call it not a flower - this little weed,
If plucking it, I kill it, root and seed -
Better the world were if it lay there dead."

"Ah - rather let it live!" a second cried,
"Weed it may be, and yet it has its use,
Here in its healing essence its excuse
For blooming lies, and here its only pride."

"Destroy it not!" another pled, "Behold
This tapering leaf - this soft and tender green,
Upon my canvas it shall bloom serene -
This tiny chalice-fleck of living gold."

Then one bent over it, "Ah, flowret bright!
For only flowers in this garden grow, -
His earth, His sunshine made thee, o'er thee blow
His winds, ...
Helen Leah Reed

Songs Of Shattering III
All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree!
Ere spring was going--ah, spring is gone!
And there comes no summer to the like of you and me,--
Blossom time is early, but no fruit sets on.

All the dog-wood blossoms are underneath the tree,
Browned at the edges, turned in a day;
And I would with all my heart they trimmed a mound for me,
And weeds were tall on all the paths that led that way!
Edna St. Vincent Millay