Note: Edna St. Vincent Millay is my favorite poet in the whole world. These are just a few of her sonnets. If you're not into this, check out my Pretty Good Poems By Men page.
Sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay
If I should learn, in some quite casual way
I think I should have loved you presently
Count them unclean, these tears that turn no mill
Only until this last cigarette is ended
Loving you less than life, a little less
I too beneath your moon, almighty Sex,
Not in a silver casket cool with pearls
Or rich with red corundrum or with blue,
Locked, and the key withheld, as other girls
Have given their loves, I give my love to
you;
Not in a lovers'-knot, not in a ring
Worked in such fashion, and the legend plain-
Semper fidelis, where a secret spring
Kennels a drop of mischief for the brain:
Love in the open hand, no thing but that
Ungemmed, unhidden, wishing
not to hurt,
As one should bring you cowslips in a hat
Swung from the hand, or apples in her skirt,
I bring you, calling out as children do:
"Look what I have!-And these are all
for you."
If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
That you were gone, not to return again-
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man, who happened to be you,
At noon today had happened to be killed-
I should not cry aloud-I could not cry
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place-
I should but watch the station lights rush
by
With a more careful interest on my face;
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
Where to store furs and how to treat the
hair.
I think
I should have loved you presently,
And given in earnest words I flung in jest;
And lifted honest eyes for you to see,
And caught your hand against my cheek and
breast;
And all my pretty follies flung aside
That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,
Naked of reticence and shorn of pride,
Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.
I, that had been to you, had you remained,
But one more waking from a recurrent dream,
Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained,
And walk your memory's halls, austere, supreme,
A ghost in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or two.
Count them unclean, these tears that turn no mill,
This salty flux of sorrow
from the heart;
Count them unclean, and grant me one day
still
To weep, in an avoided room apart.
I shall come forth at length with reddened
lid
Transparent, and thick
mouth, and take the plough...
That other men may hope, as I once did;
That other men may weep, as I do now.
I am beside you, I am at your back
Firing our bridges, I am
in your van;
I share your march, your hunger; all I lack
Is the sure song I cannot sing, you can.
You think we build a world; I think we leave
Only these tools, wherewith
to strain and grieve.
Only
until this last cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on the wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu, - farewell!-the dream is
done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The colour and the features,
every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set.
Loving you less than life, a little less
Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall
Or brush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess
I cannot swear I love you not at all.
For there is that about you in this light-
A yellow darkness, sinister of rain-
Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight
To dwell on you, and dwell on you again.
And I am made aware of many a week
I shall consume, remembering in what way
Your brown hair grows about your brow and cheek,
And what divine absurdities you say:
Till all the world, and I, and surely you,
Will know I love you, whether or not I do.
I too beneath your moon, almighty Sex,
Go forth at nightfall crying like a cat,
Leaving the lofty tower I laboured at
For birds to foul and boys and girls to
vex
With tittering chalk; and you, and the long
necks
Of neighbours sitting where their mothers
sat
Are well aware of shadowy this and that
In me that's neither noble nor complex.
Such as I am, however, I have brought
To what it is, this tower; it is my own;
Though it was reared To Beauty, it was wrought
From what I had to build with: honest bone
Is there, and anguish; pride; and burning
thought;
And lust is there, and nights not spent
alone.