“You write very well for the voice – something I am able to say to so few people who send me their music…”
I. Mortal Flesh, Is Not Your Place in the Ground?
Mortal flesh, is not your place in the ground? -- Why do you stare so
At the bright planet serene in the clear green evening sky
above the many-coloured streakéd clouds? --
Your brows drawn together as if to chide, your mouth set as if in anger.
Learn to love blackness while there is yet time, blackness
Unpatterned, blackness without horizons.
Beautiful are the trees in autumn, the emerald pines
Dark among the light-red leaves of the maple and the dark-red
Leaves of the white oak and the indigo long
Leaves of the white ash.
But why do you stand so, staring with stern face of ecstasy at the autumn leaves,
At the boughs hung with banners along the road as if a procession were about to pass?
Learn to love roots instead, that soon above your head shall be as branches.
II. The Buck in the Snow
White sky, over the hemlocks bowed with snow,
Saw you not at the beginning of evening the antlered buck and his doe
Standing in the apple-orchard? I saw them. I saw them suddenly go,
Tails up, with long leaps lovely and slow,
Over the stone-wall into the wood of hemlocks bowed with snow.
Now he lies here, his wild blood scalding the snow.
How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers
The buck in the snow.
How strange a thing--a mile away by now, it may be,
Under the heavy hemlocks that as the moments pass
Shift their loads a little, letting fall a feather of snow--
Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.
III. Ebb
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.
IV. Lament
Listen, children:
Your father is dead.
From his old coats
I'll make you little jackets;
I'll make you little trousers
From his old pants.
There'll be in his pockets
Things he used to put there,
Keys and pennies
Covered with tobacco;
Dan shall have the pennies
To save in his bank;
Anne shall have the keys
To make a pretty noise with.
Life must go on,
And the dead be forgotten;
Life must go on,
Though good men die;
Anne, eat your breakfast;
Dan, take your medicine;
Life must go on;
I forget just why.
V. Dirge without Music
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, - but the rest is lost.
The answer quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,-
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Ebb,” “Lament.” Copyright ©1921, 1948 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis.
“The Buck in the Snow,” “Dirge without Music.” Copyright ©1928, 1955 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis.
“Mortal Flesh, Is Not Your Place in the Ground?” Copyright ©1939, 1967 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis.
All rights reserved. Words published by permission.
