Tuesday, September 11, 2007

Why I love this woman...

I began my romance with Edna St. Vincent Millay through an actual romance with a brilliant poet in her own rite..(who shall remain nameless)...the first time I saw her sit on the patio with a glass of wine in her hand and perfectly recite Renascence I was mesmerized. Both by the poet before me, and the poet before her, who had birthed those words. From then on, it went from a love to an obsession....as is the normal transition of these things for me. The more I read, the more my heart ached....the more I connected with her words, the more i felt they were my own. I spent hours reading, memorizing and applying her verse, until it became "useful" in my daily life. I have yet to find a time in my world that is not perfectly and completely conveyed in just one line from Edna St. Vincent Millay's pen.

Here are some of my current favorites~


FIRST FIG

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah my foes, and oh, my friends--,
It gives a lovely light!


PASSER MORTUUS EST

Death devours all lovely things:
Lesbia with her sparrow
Shares the darkness, --presently
Every bed is narrow.

Unremembered as old rain
Dries the sheer libation;
And the little petulant hand
Is an annotation.

After all, my earstwhile dear,
My no longer cherished,
Need we say it was not love,
Just because it perished?


THE TRUE ENCOUNTER

"Wolf!" cried my cunning heart
At every sheep it spied,
And roused the countryside.

"Wolf!" "Wolf!" ---and up would start
Good neighbors, bringing spade,
and pitchfork to my aid,

At length my cry was known:
Therein lay my release.
I met the wolf alone
And was devoured in peace.


THE PHILOSOPHER
(this was the first one I memorized....it really hit a nerve for me, it is still my favorite)

And what are you that, wanting you,
I should be kept awake
as many nights as there are days
with weeping for your sake?

And what are you that missing you,
as many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
and looking at the wall?

I know a man that's a braver man
and twenty men as kind,
and what are you, that you should be
the one man in my mind?

Yet women's ways are witless ways,
as any sage will tell--
And what am I, that I should love
So wisely and so well?

This was the in the top of my graduation announcements for college...it fit me perfect

...The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake,
Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road
A gateless garden, and an open path:
My feet to follow, and my heart to hold.

This was my Christmas Card last year..

"Not Truth, but Faith it is that keeps the world alive"

2 comments:

Heather said...

beautiful. I'd never read any of her stuff before and it is breathtaking.

thanks for sharing!

Kristen said...

I REALLY like all her writing...Ive become quite the collector....