Vincent Millay

“Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds depart         And come, for some uncertain moments lent.         Man were immortal and omnipotent, Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art, Keep with thy glorious train firm state within his heart.                Thou messenger of sympathies,                That wax and wane in lovers' eyes; Thou, that to human thought art nourishment,                Like darkness to a dying flame!                Depart not as thy shadow came,                Depart not—lest the grave should be, Like life and fear, a dark reality.“

“Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is: What if my leaves are falling like its own! The tumult of thy mighty harmonies Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone, Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce, My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one! Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither'd leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguish'd hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to unawaken'd earth The trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind, If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?”

“She hurried at his words, beset with fears,       For there were sleeping dragons all around,       At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears—       Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found.—       In all the house was heard no human sound.       A chain-droop'd lamp was flickering by each door;       The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,       Flutter'd in the besieging wind's uproar; And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor. “

“For early didst thou leave the world, with powers Fresh, undiverted to the world without,     Firm to their mark, not spent on other things; Free from the sick fatigue, the languid doubt,     Which much to have tried, in much been baffled, brings.          O life unlike to ours! Who fluctuate idly without term or scope,     Of whom each strives, nor knows for what he strives,     And each half lives a hundred different lives; Who wait like thee, but not, like thee, in hope.“

(About learning the following poems by heart: Matthew Arnold’s “Scholar Gypsy”, Keats’s “Eve of St. Agnes” and “Lamia”, and Shelley’s “To the West Wind” and “Hymn to Intellectual Beauty”)

– Edna St. Vincent Millay from the Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay

“As ever, the companion of your middle age, the friend of your declining years, the old woman who’ll sit before the fire with you fifty years from now and knit the left stocking while you knit the right.”