Afternoon on a Hill

(The Monongahela, a river flowing through Pennsylvania
and West Virginia, white-line woodcut by Blanche Lazelle,
1876-1936, American artist)

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) was a prolific writer of novels, libretti, lyric poems, and some of America’s finest sonnets. Her poetry could be flippant and even brittle at times, but her best work reflects a sensitivity and appreciation of beauty and nature.

AFTERNOON ON A HILL

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!

On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven

(Edna St. Vincent Millay among the Magnolias,
1914, by Arnold Genthe, 1862-1942, American
photographer)

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950) is a prolific writer of novels, libretti, lyric poems, and some of America’s finest sonnets.

ON HEARING A SYMPHONY OF BEETHOVEN

Sweet sounds, oh, beautiful music, do not cease!
Reject me not into the world again.
With you alone is excellence and peace,
Mankind made plausible, his purpose plain.
Enchanted in your air benign and shrewd,
With limbs a-sprawl and empty faces pale,
The spiteful and the stingy and the rude
Sleep like the scullions in the fairy-tale.
This moment is the best the world can give:
The tranquil blossom on the tortured stem.
Reject me not, sweet sounds! oh, let me live,
Till Doom espy my towers and scatter them,
A city spell-bound under the aging sun.
Music my rampart, and my only one.

The Spring and the Fall

Each Friday we provide the link to the blogger who is hosting a celebration of poetry around the blogosphere. At that site you can find the links to the many other blogs that are posting poems (new and old), discussions of poems, and reviews of poetry books. It’s also a great way to explore the internet.

Enjoy the festivities!

The host this week is Laura Salas.

You can visit her here at Writing the World for Kids


(Sunlight and Shadow, Newbury Marshes, Massachusetts
by Martin Johnson Heade, 1819-1904, American artist)

“Love is a circle that doth restless move / In the same sweet eternity of love.” ~ Robert Herrick (1591-1674), the greatest of the English Cavalier poets

THE SPRING AND THE FALL

In the spring of the year, in the spring of the year,
I walked the road beside my dear.
The trees were black where the bark was wet.
I see them yet, in the spring of the year.
He broke me a bough of the blossoming peach
That was out of the way and hard to reach.

In the fall of the year, in the fall of the year,
I walked the road beside my dear.
The rooks went up with a raucous trill.
I hear them still, in the fall of the year.
He laughed at all I dared to praise,
And broke my heart, in little ways.

Year be springing or year be falling,
The bark will drip and the birds be calling.
There’s much that’s fine to see and hear
In the spring of a year, in the fall of a year.
’Tis not love’s going hurt my days,
But that it went in little ways.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), American poet

Counting-Out Rhyme

(Blue Sky by Emily Carr, 1871-1945, Canadian
writer and painter whose work celebrated the
cultures of the Indians of the Pacific Northwest.)

We all notice the colors of the leaves on the trees in Autumn. It’s the poet who notes that the barks of those trees also have varied hues.

COUNTING-OUT RHYME

Silver bark of beech, and sallow
Bark of yellow birch and yellow
Twig of willow.

Stripe of green in moosewood maple,
Color seen in leaf of apple,
Bark of popple.*

Wood of popple pale as moonbeam,
Wood of oak for yoke and barn-beam,
Wood of hornbeam.

Silver bark of beech, and hollow
Stem of elder, tall and yellow
Twig of willow.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), American poet

* popple - poplar

I Like Americans

(Bennington, 1945, by Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma”
Moses, 1860-1961, American painter)

And so, we come to the end of our month-long celebration of the American experiment.

“I want no criticism of America at my table. The Americans criticize themselves more than enough,” said Winston Churchill (1874-1965), English statesman, writer, and historian.

I LIKE AMERICANS

I like Americans.
You may say what you will, they are the nicest people in the world.
They sleep with their windows open.
Their bathtubs are never dry.
They are not grown up yet. They still believe in Santa Claus.

They are terribly in earnest.
But they laugh at everything . . .

I like Americans.
They give the matches free . . .

I like Americans.
They are the only men in the world, the sight of whom in their shirt-sleeves is not rumpled, embryonic and agonizing . . .

I like Americans.
They carry such pretty umbrellas.
The Avenue de l’Opera on a rainy day is just an avenue on a rainy day.
But Fifth Avenue on a rainy day is an old-fashioned garden under a shower . . .

They are always rocking the boat.
I like Americans.
They either shoot the whole nickel, or give up the bones.
You may say what you will, they are the nicest people in the world.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), American poet

Memory

(Girls on a Bridge by Edvard Munch, 1863-1944,
Norwegian painter)

RECUERDO

We were very tired, we were very merry –
We had gone back and forth all night on 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 a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry –
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed “Good morrow, mother!” to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept “God bless you!” for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

~ Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), American poet, translator and writer of verse dramas