I rejoiced to find this thread yesterday, having just read a couple of her poems for the "Mind's Eye Radio" program that is broadcast out of Madison. The theme for this month was "Influences." I've been influenced by a lot of writers, but perhaps Millay's influence has been the most sustaining.
Below are the two poems I read for the radio. The first sonnet, I feel, is closer to the quintessential Millay than the one Julie quoted, fine though it is. She basically is not a restrained, understated poet, which is why I for one like her -- she does not apologize.
Esther
Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky,
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by,
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to see,
Nor that a man's desire is hushed so soon
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I always known: love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales.
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.
*
JUSTICE DENIED IN MASSACHUSETTS
Let us abandon then our gardens and go home
And sit in the sitting-room.
Shall the larkspur blossom or the corn grow under this cloud?
Sour to the fruitful seed
Is the cold earth under this cloud,
Fostering quack and weed, we have marched upon but cannot conquer;
We have bent the blades of our hoes against the stalks of them.
Let us go home, and sit in the sitting-room.
Not in our day
Shall the cloud go over and the sun rise as before,
Beneficent upon us
Out of the glittering bay,
And the warm winds be blown inward from the sea
Moving the blades of corn
With a peaceful sound.
Forlorn, forlorn
Stands the blue hay-rack by the empty mow,
And the petals drop to the ground,
Leaving the tree unfruited.
The sun that warmed our stooping backs and withered the weed uprooted –
We shall not feel it again.
We shall die in darkness, and be buried in the rain.
What from the splendid dead
We have inherited –
Furrows sweet to the grain, and the weed subdued –
See now the slug and the mildew plunder.
Evil does overwhelm
The larkspur and the corn;
We have seen them go under.
Let us sit here, sit still,
Here in the sitting-room until we die;
At the step of Death on the walk, rise and go;
Leaving to our children's children this beautiful doorway,
And this elm,
And a blighted earth to till
With a broken hoe.
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