EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

 

*

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 the line

Of the horizon, thin and fine,

Straight around till I was come

Back to where I’d started from;

And all I saw from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood.

Over these things I could not 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 looked, and, 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 on 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, sick’ning, 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 pawnl

For my omniscience paid I toll

In infinite remorse of soul.

All sin was of my 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,

And 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 head

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 pattering hoof

Upon my lowly, thatched roof,

And seemed to love the sound far more

Than ever I had done before.

For rain it hath a friendly sound

To one who’s six feet underground;

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,
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.
How can I bear it; buried here,
While overhead the sky grows clear
And blue again after the storm?
O, multi-colored, multiform,
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 let 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 startled 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 trees 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 fiercely, 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 will 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 finger on Thy heart!

 

The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;
Above the world is stretched the sky,—
No higher than 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 cannot keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat—the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

 

*

The Ballad of the Harp-Weaver

 

“Son,” said my mother,
      When I was knee-high,
“You’ve need of clothes to cover you,
      And not a rag have I.

 

“There’s nothing in the house
      To make a boy breeches,
Nor shears to cut a cloth with
      Nor thread to take stitches.

 

“There’s nothing in the house
      But a loaf-end of rye,
And a harp with a woman’s head
      Nobody will buy,”

And she began to cry.

 

That was in the early fall.
      When came the late fall,
“Son,” she said, “the sight of you
      Makes your mother’s blood crawl,–

 

“Little skinny shoulder-blades
      Sticking through your clothes!
And where you’ll get a jacket from
      God above knows.

 

“It’s lucky for me, lad,
      Your daddy’s in the ground,
And can’t see the way I let
      His son go around!”
      And she made a queer sound.

 

That was in the late fall.
      When the winter came,
I’d not a pair of breeches
      Nor a shirt to my name.

 

I couldn’t go to school,
      Or out of doors to play.
And all the other little boys
      Passed our way.

 

“Son,” said my mother,
      “Come, climb into my lap,
And I’ll chafe your little bones
      While you take a nap.”

 

And, oh, but we were silly
      For half an hour or more,
Me with my long legs
      Dragging on the floor,

 

A-rock-rock-rocking
      To a mother-goose rhyme!
Oh, but we were happy
      For half an hour’s time!

 

But there was I, a great boy,
      And what would folks say
To hear my mother singing me
      To sleep all day,
      In such a daft way?

 

Men say the winter
      Was bad that year;
Fuel was scarce,
      And food was dear.

 

A wind with a wolf’s head
      Howled about our door,
And we burned up the chairs
      And sat upon the floor.

 

All that was left us
      Was a chair we couldn’t break,
And the harp with a woman’s head
      Nobody would take,
      For song or pity’s sake.

 

The night before Christmas
      I cried with the cold,
I cried myself to sleep
      Like a two-year-old.

 

And in the deep night
      I felt my mother rise,
And stare down upon me
      With love in her eyes.

 

I saw my mother sitting
      On the one good chair,
A light falling on her
      From I couldn’t tell where,

 

Looking nineteen,
      And not a day older,
And the harp with a woman’s head
      Leaned against her shoulder.

 

Her thin fingers, moving
      In the thin, tall strings,
Were weav-weav-weaving
      Wonderful things.

 

Many bright threads,
      From where I couldn’t see,
Were running through the harp-strings
      Rapidly,

 

And gold threads whistling
      Through my mother’s hand.
I saw the web grow,
      And the pattern expand.

 

She wove a child’s jacket,
      And when it was done
She laid it on the floor
      And wove another one.

 

She wove a red cloak
      So regal to see,
“She’s made it for a king’s son,”
      I said, “and not for me.”

But I knew it was for me.

 

She wove a pair of breeches
      Quicker than that!
She wove a pair of boots
      And a little cocked hat.

 

She wove a pair of mittens,
      She wove a little blouse,
She wove all night
      In the still, cold house.

 

She sang as she worked,
      And the harp-strings spoke;
Her voice never faltered,
      And the thread never broke.
      And when I awoke,–

 

There sat my mother
      With the harp against her shoulder
Looking nineteen
      And not a day older,

 

A smile about her lips,
      And a light about her head,
And her hands in the harp-strings
      Frozen dead.

 

And piled up beside her
      And toppling to the skies,
Were the clothes of a king’s son,
      Just my size.