Ebb

By Edna St. Vincent Millay 

                          

I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.

Bluebird Lake

Pastoral

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

If it were only still!—
With far away the shrill
Crying of a cock;
Or the shaken bell
From a cow's throat
Moving through the bushes;
Or the soft shock
Of wizened apples falling
From an old tree
In a forgotten orchard
Upon the hilly rock!

Oh, grey hill,
Where the grazing herd
Licks the purple blossom,
Crops the spiky weed!
Oh, stony pasture,
Where the tall mullein
Stands up so sturdy
On its little seed!

Among the Vineyards

Afternoon On A Hill 

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I will be the gladdest thing

   Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
   And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
   With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
   And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
   Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
   And then start down!

Close of Day No Longer Walks the Sky

Pity Me Not Because The Light Of Day

Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor that a man's desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales:
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at ever turn.      

    

By Edna St. Vincent Millay

Bridal Veil Falls

Sonnet 03: Mindful Of You The Sodden Earth In Spring

Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,
And all the flowers that in the springtime grow,
And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow
Rising of the round moon, all throats that sing
The summer through, and each departing wing,
And all the nests that the bared branches show,
And all winds that in any weather blow,
And all the storms that the four seasons bring.

You go no more on your exultant feet
Up paths that only mist and morning knew,
Or watch the wind, or listen to the beat
Of a bird's wings too high in air to view,—
But you were something more than young and sweet
And fair,—and the long year remembers you.

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)

"Time does not bring relief”

“Time does not bring relief; you all have lied”    

Time does not bring relief; you all have lied   

Who told me time would ease me of my pain!   

I miss him in the weeping of the rain;   

I want him at the shrinking of the tide;

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,   

And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;   

But last year’s bitter loving must remain

Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.   

There are a hundred places where I fear   

To go,—so with his memory they brim.   

And entering with relief some quiet place   

Where never fell his foot or shone his face   

I say, “There is no memory of him here!”   

And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
By Edna St. Vincent Millay  (1892-1950)

Rotorua Lake, Lake of Black Swans

Rotorua, a Maori word meaning literally "second lake", was originally settled by the Maori of the Te Arawa tribe.  Rotorua is the heartland of New Zealand Maori culture.  Lake Rotorua is the largest of the 16 lakes in the Rotorua district.  Mokoia Island is on the lake and for centuries been occupied by various tribes. The lake is a treasure of wildlife, particularly black swans. 
There are seven species of swans in the world, all pure white except for the Australian black swan and the South American black-necked swan. The black swan was introduced as a game bird from Australia to New Zealand in the 1860s but also probably reached New Zealand naturally and are considered a native bird.

Sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay
From Fatal Interview

"O ailing Love, compose your struggling wing!
Confess you mortal; be content to die.
How better dead, than be this awkward thing
Dragging in dust its feathers of the sky;
Hitching and rearing, plunging beak to loam,
Upturned, disheveled, uttering a weak sound
Less proud than of the gull that rakes the foam,
Less kind than of the hawk that scours the ground.
While yet your awful beauty, even at bay,
Beats off the impious eye, the outstretched hand,
And what your hue or fashion none can say,
Vanish, be fled, leave me a wingless land . . .
Save where one moment down the quiet tide
Fades a white swan, with a black swan beside."

—  Edna St Vincent Millay

Edna St. Vincent Millay (February 22, 1892 – October 19, 1950) was an American lyrical poet and playwright. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry, and was also known for her feminist activism and her many love affairs.

Mamaroneck, NY, 1914, by Arnold Genthe.

 

On her death, The New York Times described her as "an idol of the younger generation during the glorious early days of Greenwich Village...One of the greatest American poets of her time." Thomas Hardy said that America had two great attractions: the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay.