Edna St. Vincent Millay, Pg.7

THE LEAF AND THE TREE

When will you learn, myself, to be
a dying leaf on a living tree?
Budding, swelling, growing strong,
Wearing green, but not for long,
Drawing sustenance from air,
That other leaves, and you not there,
May bud, and at the autumn's call
Wearing russet, ready to fall?
Has not this trunk a deed to do
Unguessed by small and tremulous you?
Shall not these branches in the end
To wisdom and the truth ascend?
And the great lightning plunging by
Look sidewise with a golden eye
To glimpse a tree so tall and proud
It sheds its leaves upon a cloud?

Here, I think, is the heart's grief:
The tree, no mightier than the leaf,
Makes firm its root and spreads it crown
And stands; but in the end comes down.
That airy top no boy could climb

Is trodden in a little time By cattle on their way to drink. The fluttering thoughts a leaf can think, That hears the wind and waits its turn, Have taught it all a tree can learn. Time can make soft that iron wood. The tallest trunk that ever stood, In time, without a dream to keep, Crawls in beside the root to sleep. � � ESVM � � �� � THE LITTLE GHOST

I knew her for a little ghost
That in my garden walked;
The wall is high--higher than most--
And the green gate was locked.

And yet I did not think of that
Till after she was gone--
I knew her by the broad white hat,
All ruffled, she had on.

By the dear ruffles round her feet,
By her small hands that hung
In their lace mitts, austere and sweet,
Her gown's white folds among.

I watched to see if she would stay,
What she would do--and oh!
She looked as if she liked the way
I let my garden grow!

She bent above my favourite mint
With conscious garden grace,
She smiled and smiled--there was no hint
Of sadness in her face.

She held her gown on either side
To let her slippers show,
And up the walk she went with pride,
The way great ladies go.

And where the walk is built in new
And is of ivy bare
She paused--then opened and passed through
A gate that once was there.

ESVM

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THE FLEDGLING � � So, art thou feahered, art thou flown, Thou naked thing? --and canst alone Upon the unsolid summer air Sustain thyself, and prosper there? Shall� no more with anxious note Advise thee� through the happy day, Thrusting the worm into thy throat, Bearing thine excrement away? Alas, I think I see thee yet, Perched on the windy parapet, Defer thy flight a moment still To clean thy wing with careful bill. And thou are feathered, thou art flown; And hast a project of thine own. � � ESVM � � �� � � AUTUMN DAYBREAK � � Cold wind of autumn, blowing loud At dawn, a fortnight overdue, Jostling the doors, and tearing� through My bedroom to rejoin the cloud, I know -- for I can hear the hiss And scrape of leaves along the floor -- How may boughs, lashed bare by this, Will rake the cluttered sky once more. Tardy, and somewhat south of east, The sun will rise at length, made known More by the meagre light increased Than by� a disk in splendour shown; When, having but to turn my head, Through the stripped maple I shall see, Bleak and remembered, patched with red, The hill all summer hid from me. � � �Edna St. Vincent Millay � � �� � � � THE SNOW STORM � � No hawk hangs over in this air: The urgent snow is everywhere. The wing adroiter than a sail Must lean away from such a gale, Abandoning its straight intent, Or else expose tough ligament And tender flesh to what before Meant dampened feathers, nothing more. Forceless upon our backs there fall Infrequent flakes hexagonal, Devised in many a curious style To charm our safety for a while, Where close to earth like mice we go Under the horizontal snow. � � Edna St. Vincent Millay� (1937) � � �� � � � SONNET � � �� Women have loved before as I love now; At least, in lively chronicles of the past - Of Irish waters by a Cornish prow Or Trojan waters by a Spartan mast Much to their cost invaded - here and there, Hunting the amorous line, skimming the rest, I find some woman bearing as I bear Love like a burning city in the breast. I think however that of all alive I only in such utter, ancient way Do suffer love; in me alone survive The unregenerate passions of a day When treacherous queens, with death upon the tread, Heedless and willful, took their knights to bed. � � Edna St. Vincent Millay (1930) � � �� � � � � UNDERGROUND SYSTEM � � (From Huntsman, What Quarry?) � � Set the foot down with distrust upon the crust of the world ---it is thin. Moles are at work beneath us; they have tunneled the sub-soil With separate chambers; which at an appointed knock Could be as one, could intersect and interlock.� We walk on the skin Of life.� No toil Of rake or hoe, no lime, no phosphate, no rotation of crops, no irrigation of the land, Will coax the limp and flattened grain to stand On that bad day, or feed to strength the nibbled root's of our nation. Ease has demoralized us, nearly so, we know Nothing of the rigours of winter:� The house has a roof against -- the car a top against -- the snow. All will be well, we say, it is� a bit, like the rising of the sun, For our country to prosper; who can prevail against us? No one. The house has a roof; but the boards of its floor are rotting, and hall upon hall The moles have built their palace beneath us, we have not far to fall. � � Edna St. Vincent Millay � ( from Make Bright the Arrows 1940 Notebook) � � � �� � � � TWO SONNETS IN MEMORY � � (Nicola Sacco -- Bartolomeo Vanzetti) Executed August 23, 1927 � � I As men have loved their lovers in times past And sung their wit, their virtue and their grace, So have we loved sweet Justice to the last, That now lies here in an unseemly place. The child will quit the cradle and grow wise And stare on beauty till his senses drown; Yet shall be seen no more by mortal eyes Such beauty as here walked and here went down. Like birds that hear the winter crying plain Her courtiers leave to seek the clement south; Many have praised her, we alone remain To break a fist against the lying mouth Of any man who says this was not so: Though she be dead now, as indeed we know.

II

Where can the heart be hidden in the ground
And be at peace, and be at peace forever,
Under the world, untroubled by the sound
Of mortal tears, that cease from pouring never?
Well for the heart, by stern compassion harried,
If death be deeper than the churchmen say, --
Gone from this world indeed what's graveward carried,
And laid to rest indeed what's laid away.
Anguish enough while yet the indignant breather
Have blood to spurt upon the oppressor's hand;
Who would eternal be, and hang in ether
A stuffless ghost above his struggling land,
Retching in vain to render up the groan
That is not there, being aching dust's alone?

Edna St. Vincent Millay

(Another Sacco & Venzetti poem: "Justice Denied In Massachussetts")

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