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| Edna St. Vincent Millay |
SONNET XLVII
Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish — and men do —
I shall have only good to say of you.
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
ReplyDeleteRubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
oh Edna Edna Edna! G, I read her words...her acres and acres of them..and sense there was no part of her body that didn't feel...her bones her eyelashes her elbows..her all...
This I've memorised...tears to the eyes before I even post the poem..how about that!
Memory of Cape Cod
"The wind in the ash-tree sounds like surf on the shore at Truro.
I will shut my eyes . . . hush, be still with your silly bleating, sheep on Shillingstone Hill . . .
They said: Come along! They said: Leave your pebbles on the sand and come along, it’s long after sunset!
The mosquitoes will be thick in the pine-woods along by Long Nook, the wind’s died down!
They said: Leave your pebbles on the sand, and your shells, too, and come along, we’ll find you another beach like the beach at Truro.
Let me listen to wind in the ash . . . it sounds like surf on the shore."
Oftentimes I'm at a beach..walking the seashore and Edna's Cape Cod words are my pals...