American Poets Project Millay: Selected Poems Book

"The best of Millay's virtuoso sonnets and short lyrics in a selection that spans her entire career." (from the back cover) Indeed, the American Poets Project selection of Millay's poetry includes the best of Renascence and Other Poems (such as "Afternoon on a Hill"), A Few Figs from Thistles (such as "First Fig"), Second April (such as "Alms"), The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (such as "Autumn Chant"), The Buck in the Snow (such as "To Inez Milholland"), The King's Henchman , Wine from These Grapes (such as "The Solid Sprite Who Stands Alone"), Conversation at Midnight , Huntsman, What Quarry? (such as "Fontaine, Je Ne Boirai Pas De Ton Eau!"), Make Bright the Arrows (such as "Make bright the arrows"), The Murder of Lidice ("They marched them out to the public square"), and Mine the Harvest (such as "For Warmth Alone, for Shelter Only")...
I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.
- Afternoon on a Hill (from Renascence and Other Poems)

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light!
- First Fig (from A Few Figs from Thistles)

There was a time I stood and watched
The small, ill-natured sparrows' fray;
I loved the beggar that I fed,
I cared for what he had to say,

I stood and watched him out of sight;
Today I reach around the door
And set a bowl upon the step;
My heart is what it was before,

But it is winter with your love;
I scatter crumbs upon the sill,
And close the window, - and the birds
May take or leave them, as they will.
- Alms (from Second April)

Beauty never slumbers;
All is in her name;
But the rose remembers
The dust from which it came.
- Autumn Chant (from The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems)

Upon this marble busy that is not I
Lay the tound, formal wreath that is not fame;
But in the forum of my silenced cry
Root ye the living tree whose sap is flame.
I, that was proud and valiant, am not more; -
Save as a dream that wanders wide and late,
Save as a wind that rattles the stout door,
Troubling the ashes in the sheltered grate.
The stone will perish; I shall be twice dust.
Only my standard on a taken hill
Can cheat the mildew and the red-brown rust
And make immortal my adventurous will.
Even now the silk is tugging at the staff:
Take up the song; forget the epitaph.
- To Inez Milholland (from The Buck in the Snow)

Who lie among my tears and rust,
And all because a mortal brain
That loved to think, is clogged with dust,
And will not think again.
- The Solid Sprite Who Stands Alone (from Wine from These Grapes)

"Fountain," I have cried to that unbubbling well, "I will
not drink of thy water!" Yet I thirst
For a mouthful of - not to swallow, only to rinse my
mouth in - peace. And while the eyes of the past condemn,
The eyes of the present narrow into assignation.
And . . . worst . . .
The young are so old, they are born with their fingers
crossed; I shall get no help from them.
- "Fontaine, Je Ne Boirai Pas De Ton Eau!" (from Huntsman, What Quarry?)

Make bright the arrows,
Gather the shields:
Conquest narrows
The peaceful fields.

Stock well the quiver
With arrows bright:
The bowmen feared
Need never fight.

Make bright the arrows,
O peaceful and wise!
Gather the shields
Against surprise.
- "Make bright the arrows" (from Make Bright the Arrows)

They marches them out to the public square,
Two hundred men in a row;
And every step of the distance there,
Each stone in the road, each man did know,
And every alley and doorway where
As a carefree boy, not long ago,
With boys of his age he would hide and run
And shout, in the days when everyone
Was safe, and free, and school was out . . .
Not very long ago . . .
And he felt on his face the soft June air,
And thought, "This cannot be so!"
- "They marched them out to the public square" (from The Murder of Lidice)

For warmth alone, for shelter only
From the cold anger of the eyeless wind,
That knows my whereabouts, and mainly
To be at your door when I go down
Is abroad at all tonight in town,
I left my phrase in air, and sinned,
Laying my head against your arm
A moment, and as suddenly
Withdrawing it, and sitting there,
Warmed a little but far from warm,
And the wind still waiting at the foot of the stair,
And much harm done, and the phrase in the air.
- For Warmth Alone, for Shelter Only (from Mine the Harvest)

The selection also includes the complete texts of Aria da Capo and Fatal Interview , along with Millay's translations of Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil ...
COLUMBINE: Pierrot, a macaroon,'I cannot live without a macaroon!
PIERROT: My only love, You are so intense! . . . Is it Tuesday, Columbine?' I'll kiss you if it's Tuesday.
COLUMBINE: It is Wednesday, If you must know. . . . Is this my artichoke Or yours?
PIERROT: Ah, Columbine, as if it mattered! Wednesday. . . . Will it be Tuesday, then, to-morrow, By any chance? . . .
- Aria da Capo

What thing is this that, built of salt and lime
And such dry motes as in the sunbeam show,
Has power upon me that do daily climb
The dustless air? - for whom those peaks of snow
Whereup the lungs of man with borrowed breath
Go labouring to a doom I may not feel,
Are but a pearled and roseate plain beneath
My winged helmet and my winged heal.
What sweet emotions neither foe nor friend
Are these that clog my flight? what thing is this
That hastening headlong to a dusty end
Dare turn upon me these proud eyes of bliss?
Up, up, my feathers! - ere I lay you by
To journey barefoot with a mortal joy.
- Fatal Interview, I

All this was long ago, but I do not forget
One small white house, between the city and the farms;
The Venus, the Pomona, - I remember yet
How in the leaves they hid their chipping plaster charms;
And the majestic sun at evening, setting late,
Behind the pane that broke and scattered his bright rays,
How like an open eye he seemed to contemplate
Our long and silent dinners with a curious gaze:
The while his golden beams, like tapers burning there,
Made splendid the serge curtains and the simple fare.
- A Memory (from Charles Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil)