Edna St. Vincent Millay

A Poem from Edna St. Vincent Millay: Grown-up Was it for this I uttered prayers, And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs, That now, domestic as a plate, I should retire at half-past eight?

Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age. The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

I went to Boston fully expecting to be arrested - arrested by a polizia created by a government that my ancestors rebelled to establish.

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, Though good men die; Anne, eat your breakfast; Dan, take your medicine; Life must go on; I forget just why.

I would I were alive again To kiss the fingers of the rain, To drink into my eyes the shine Of every slanting silver line, To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze From drenched and dripping apple-trees. For soon the shower will be done, And then the broad face of the sun Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth Until the world with answering mirth Shakes joyously, and each round drop Rolls twinkling, from its grass-blade top.

I drank at every vine, the last was like the first. I came upon no wine so wonderful as thirst.

She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine.

She is happy where she lies With the dust upon her eyes.

But you were something more than young and sweet And fair, - and the long year remembers you.

Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is.

l 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.

Pour away despair and rinse the cup. Eat happiness like bread.

We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race.

Beauty never slumbers; All is in her name; But the rose remembers The dust from which it came.

Lord, I do fear Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year My soul is all but out of me-let fall No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

Youth, have no pity; leave no farthing here For age to invest in compromise and fear.

If ever I said in grief or pride, I'd tired of honest things, I lied.

When you are corn and roses and at rest I shall endure, a dense and sanguine ghost To haunt the scene where I was happiest To bend above the thing I loved the most

There is no God. But it does not matter. Man is enough.

I see things with my own eyes, just as if they were the first eyes that ever saw, and then I set about to tell, as best I can, just what I've seen.

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!