Millay seems to be in the news again, with the two new biographies that have just come out (neither of which I have laid hands on yet). Has anyone out there read them? Here's a review:
New York Times Review
Apparently neither book does much to rescue her poetic reputation (which I think is probably pretty high here, but still depressed in the poetry world at large).
Anyway, I think we are agreed on the fineness of the sonnets. Her lyrics are much more uneven--some might be pale imitations of Dorothy Parker. But there are a number I like a lot. This is one I enjoy--though I'm not saying it is of the same level as the sonnets. What I like is the rocking, loose nursery-rhyme dimeter and rimes in contrast to the subject matter, and the mix of quotidian concrete images and abstraction. (Though it might have stood for a little pruning... I'm afraid this looks awfully long on the screen!)
The odd lines should be indented, but, well, you know...
Moriturus
If I could have
Two things in one:
The peace of the grave,
And the light of the sun;
My hands across
My thin breast-bone,
But aware of the moss
Invading the stone,
Aware of the flight
Of the golden flicker
With his wing to the light;
To hear him nicker
And drum with his bill
On the rotted willow;
Snug and still
On a grey pillow
Deep in the clay
Where digging is hard,
Out of the way,--
The blue shard
Of a broken platter--
If I might be
Insensate matter
With sensate me
Sitting within,
Harking and prying,
I might begin
To dicker with dying.
For the body at best
Is a bundle of aches,
Longing for rest;
It cries when it wakes
"Alas, 'tis light!"
At set of sun
"Alas, 'tis night,
And nothing done!"
Death, however,
Is a spongy wall,
Is a sticky river,
Is nothing at all.
Summon the weeper,
Wail and sing;
Call him Reaper,
Angel, King;
Call him Evil
Drunk to the lees,
Monster, Devil,--
He is less than these.
Call him Thief,
The Maggot in the Cheese,
The Canker in the Leaf,--
He is less than these.
Dusk without sound,
Where the spirit by pain
Uncoiled, is wound
To spring again;
The mind enmeshed
Laid straight in repose,
And the body refreshed
By feeding the rose,--
These are but visions;
These would be
The grave's derisions,
Could the grave see.
Here is the wish
Of one that died
Like a beached fish
On the ebb of the tide:
That he might wait
Till the tide came back,
To see if a crate,
Or a bottle, or a black
Boot, or an oar,
Or an orange peel
Be washed ashore. . . .
About his heel
The sand slips,
The last he hears
From the world's lips
Is the sand in his ears.
What thing is little?--
The aphis hid
In a house of spittle?
The hinge of the lid
Of a spider's eye
At the spider's birth?
"Greater am I
By the earth's girth
Than Might Death!"
All creatures cry
That can summon breath;--
And speak no lie.
For He is nothing;
He is less
Than Echo answering
"Nothingness!"--
Less than the heat
Of the furthest star
To the ripening wheat;
Less by far,
When all the lipping
Is said and sung,
Than the sweat dripping
From the dog's tongue.
This being so,
And I being such,
I would liever go
On a cripple's crutch,
Lopped and felled;
Liever be dependent
On a chair propelled
By a surly attendant
With a foul breath,
And be spooned my food,
Than go with Death
Where nothing good,
Not even the thrust
Of the summer gnat,
Consoles the dust
For being that.
Needy, lonely,
Stitched by pain,
Left with only
The drip of the rain
Out of all I had;
The books of the wise
Badly read
By other eyes,
Lewdly bawled
At my closing ear;
Hated, called
A lingerer here;--
Withstanding Death
Till Life be gone,
I shall treasure my breath,
I shall linger on.
I shall bolt my door
With a bolt and a cable;
I shall block my door
With a bureau and a table;
With all my might
My door shall be barred.
I shall put up a fight,
I shall take it hard.
With his hand on my mouth
He shall drag me forth,
Shrieking to the south
And clutching at the north.