Carol,
Yes, we met on-line initially, in a thread created to assist folks installing the pre release version of Win,95. How boring eh?
Carol, obviously I have not searched hard enough. Renascence, a collection of 16 poems and one 3 part song, is stunning. I thought I had read it through but clearly I have missed the passage and will renew my effort now that you have helped to steer me. Thanks so very much. In fact, the poem I intended to post here is "Renascence" from the same collection. The collection of work was done while Millay was a student at Vassar, sometime around the late 20s if I recall correctly. It caught literary attention and launched her as a poet of some renown. Like many poets her work has come in and out of vogue many times. But I love her work, in its simple language, stirring passages, feminine view, desperate reconciliation of lust and love (she was bi-sexual), and her lovely imagery.
Renascence
All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three Islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced a line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I started from;
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could see:
These were the things that bounded me.
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand!
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.
But sure the sky is big, I said:
Miles and miles above my head,
So here upon my back I'll lie
And look my fill into the sky.
And so I noticed after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop...
And - sure enough! - I see the top!
The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I 'most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed, to feel it touch the sky.
I screamed, and - lo! - Infinity
Came down and settled over me;
Forced back my scream into my chest;
Bent back my arm upon my breast;
And, pressing of the Undefined
The definition in my mind,
held up before my eyes a glass
Through which my shrinking sight did pass
Until it seemed I must behold
Immensity made manifold;
Whispered to me a word whose sound
Deafened the air for worlds around,
And brought unmuffled to my ears
The gossiping of friendly spheres,
The creaking of the tented sky,
The ticking of eternity.
I saw and heard, and knew at last
The How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forevermore.
The Universe, cleft to the core,
Lay open to my probing sense,
That, sickening, I would fain pluck thence
But could not, - nay! but needs must suck
At the great wound, and could not pluck
My lips away till I had drawn
All venom out, - Ah, fearful pawn:
For my omniscience paid I toll
In infinite remorse of soul.
All sin was of sinning, all
Atoning mine, and mine the gall
Of all regret. Mine was the weight
Of every brooded wrong, the hate
That stood behind each envious thrust,
Mine every greed, mine every lust.
And all the while, for every grief,
Each suffering, I craved relief
With individual desire;
Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire
About a thousand people crawl;
Perished with each, - then mourned for all!
A man was starving in Capri;
he moved his eyes and looked at me;
I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
I knew his hunger as my own.
I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
and every scream tore through my throat.
No hurt I did not feel, no death
That was not mine; mine each last breath
That, crying, met an answering cry
From the compassion that was I.
All suffering mine, and mine its rod;
mine, pity like the pity of God.
Ah, awful weight! Infinity
Pressed down upon the finite Me!
My anguished spirit, like a bird,
Beating against my lips I heard;
Yet lay the weight so close about
There was no room for it without.
And so beneath the weight lay I
And suffered death, but could not die.
Long had I lain thus, craving death,
When quietly the earth beneath
Gave way, and inch by inch, so great
At last had grown the crushing weight,
Into the earth I sank till I
Full six feet under ground did lie,
And sank no more - there is no weight
Can follow here, however great.
From off my breast I felt it roll,
And as it went my tortured soul
Burst forth and fled in such a gust
That all about me swirled the dust.
Deep in the earth I rested now.
Cool is its hand upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the hand
Of one who is so gladly dead.
And all at once and over all
The pitying rain began to fall;
I lay and heard each sputtering hoof
Upon my lowly, thatched roof,
And seemed to love the sound far more
Then ever I had done before.
For rain it hath a friendly sound
To one who's six feet under ground;
And scarce the friendly voice or face,
A grave is such a quiet place.
The rain, I said, is kind to come
And speak to me in my new home.
I would I were alive again
To kiss the fingers of the rain,
And 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 de 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
Roll, twinkling, from its grass blade top.
How can I hear it buried here,
While overhead the sky grows clear
And blue again after the storm?
O, multi-coloured, multi-form,
Beloved beauty over me,
That I shall never, never see
Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,
That I shall never more behold!-
Sleeping your myriad magics through,
Close-sepulchred away from you!
O God, I cried, give me new birth,
And put me back upon the earth!
Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd
And yet the heavy rain, down-poured
In one big torrent, set me free,
Washing my grave away from me!
I ceased; and through the breathless hush
That answered me, the far-off rush
Of herald wings came whispering
Like music down the vibrant string
Of my ascending prayer, and - crash!
Before the wild wind's whistling lash
The started storm clouds reared on high
And plunged in terror down the sky!
And the big rain in one black wave
Fell from the sky and struck my grave.
I know not how such things can be;
I only know there came to me
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things;
A sound as of some joyous elf
Singing sweet songs to please himself,
And through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,
Whispering to me I could hear;
I felt the rain's cool finger-tips
Brushed tenderly across my lips,
Laid gently on my sealed sight,
And all at once the heavy night
Fell from my eyes and I could see!-
A drenched and dripping apple-tree,
A last long line of silver rain,
A sky grown clear and blue again.
And as I looked a quickening gust
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell, -
I know not how such things can be! -
I breathed my soul back into me.
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I
And hailed the earth with such a cry
As is not heard save from a man
Who has been dead and lives again.
About the rees my arms I wound;
Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;
I raised my quivering arms on high;
I laughed and laughed into the sky;
Till at my throat a strangling sob
Caught firecly, and a great heart throb
Sent instant tears into my eyes
O God, I cried, no dark disguise
Can e'er hereafter hide from me
Thy radiant identity!
Thou canst not move across the grass
But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,
Nor speak , however silently,
But my hushed voice eill answer Thee.
I know the path that tells Thy way
Through the cool eve of every day;
God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my fingers on Thy heart!
The world stands out on either side
No wider then the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky, -
No higher then the soul is high.
The heart can push the sea and land
Farther away on either hand;
The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That can not keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat - the sky
Will cave in on him by and by. |
