Edna St. Vincent Millay

Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare
Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace,
And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting li...

Love, if I weep it will not matter,
And if you laugh I shall not care;
Foolish am I to think about it,
But it is good to feel you there

Love is not all: it is not meat nor
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,

I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year,
Ere I forget, or die, or move away,

This door you might not open, and you did; So enter now, and see for what slight thing You are betrayed… Here is no treasure hid, No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain For greed like yours, no writhi...

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 hu...

We were very tired, we were very merry — We had gone back and forth all night upon the ferry
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable — But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table, We lay on the hill-top underneath the moon; ...

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day But I hear its whistle shrieking
All night there isn't a train goes by,

Gazing upon him now, severe and dead, It seemed a curious thing that she had lain Beside him many a night in that cold bed, And that had been which would not be again
From his desirous body the great heat Was gone at last, it seemed, and the ...

Sorrow like a ceaseless rain Beats upon my heart
People twist and scream in pain, — Dawn will find them still again; This has neither wax nor wane, Neither stop nor start
People dress and go to town; I sit in my chair
All my thought...

I drank at every vine
The last was like the first
I came upon no wine      So wonderful as thirst
I gnawed at every root

I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over
And what did I see I had not seen before
Only a question less or a question more;
Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying