ESVM Love (or not) Poetry

I had never heard that one before, Piffka -- thanks. Here's another poem in which Millay writes about music and her response to it:

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.

Wow. Bree that is great. Isn't that the way pwerful music will make you feel? I love that, thanks for reeling it in!

Have you ever read Edna's Invocation to the Muses?

I happened on another ESVM poem that was not in the collection I usually read online.

That love at length should find me out and bring
This fierce and trivial brow unto the dust,
Is, after all, I must confess, but just;

There is a subtle beauty in this thing,
A wry perfection; wherefore now let sing
All voices how into my throat is thrust,
Unwelcome as Death's own, Love's bitter crust,
All criers proclaim it, and all steeples ring.

This being done, there let the matter rest.
What more remains is neither here nor there.
That you requite me not is plain to see;
Myself your slave herein have I confessed:

Thus far, indeed, the world may mock at me;
But if I suffer, it is my own affair.

--Edna St. Vincent Millay

Hi bree Hi piffka

I've just been re-reading some of the poems on this thread.
I am especially taken by the endings of a couple, ie. the last stanza in concert:

"...Come now, be content.
I will come back to you, I swear I will;
And you will know me still.
I shall be only a little taller
Than when I went."

The last line in: 'On Hearing A Symphony of Beethoven':
("Music my rampart, and my only one")
brings a lump to my throat!

Oh, Jorge, that's so true. Though I don't like to analyze poetry, I think it may be the immediacy, the first-person-ness of her poems that draws me in and makes me love it. She is talking to me or else her thoughts are mine.

Have you read the Invocation to the Muses? There is a part where she asks one of the Muses to allow men dying on the battlefield (it was written during WWII) to have a perfect memory so that they can die remembering all the lines of a poem or play... Good grief, that brings me to tears.

<sobbing quietly to self as I read>

OK. Here's today's Love (or not) Poem from ESVM

Ebb
I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.

Hi piffka

' Ebb' is probably the first or second ESVM poem I read. I was struck by the wonderful/sad imagery of it....' a little tepid pool /Drying inward from the edge.'

It is Thursday and time for another poem... this may be the last for her Love (or not) poems unless I find something else very fine.

DEPARTURE

It's little I care what path I take,
And where it leads it's little I care;
But out of this house, lest my heart break,
I must go, and off somewhere.

It's little I know what's in my heart,
What's in my mind it's little I know,
But there's that in me must up and start,
And it's little I care where my feet go.

I wish I could walk for a day and a night,
And find me at dawn in a desolate place
With never the rut of a road in sight,
Nor the roof of a house, nor the eyes of a face.

I wish I could walk till my blood should spout,
And drop me, never to stir again,
On a shore that is wide, for the tide is out,
And the weedy rocks are bare to the rain.

But dump or dock, where the path I take
Brings up, it's little enough I care:
And it's little I'd mind the fuss they'll make,
Huddled dead in a ditch somewhere.

'Is something the matter, dear,' she said,
'That you sit at your work so silently?'
'No, mother, no, 'twas a knot in my thread.
There goes the kettle, I'll make the tea.'

ESVM means?

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Thanks Jjorge! Sorry New Haven, I didn't mean to be mysterious, but her name is a mouthful... frequently shortened like that.

As ESVM had lovers of both sexes, I thought I ought to add this:

TO ELINOR WYLIE
Sonnet in Answer to a Question

Oh, she was beautiful in every part!
The auburn hair that bound the subtle brain;
The lovely mouth cut clear by wit and pain,
Uttering oaths and nonsense, uttering art
In casual speech and curving at the smart
On startled ears of excellence too plain
For early morning! --- Obit. Death from strain;
The soaring mind outstripped the tethered heart.
Yet here was one who had no need to die
To be remembered. Every word she said,
The lively malice of the hazel eye
Scanning the thumb-nail close --- oh, dazzling dead,
How like a comet through the darkening sky
You raced! . . . would your return were heralded.


and... TO ELINOR WYLIE (Died 1928)

For you there is no song . . .
Only the shaking
Of the voice that meant to sing; the sound of the
strong
Voice breaking.

Strange in my hand appears
The pen, and yours broken.
There are ink and tears on the page; only the tears
Have spoken.

ESVM


Of course, I could be making assumptions where none are warranted.

All right. I cannot resist, having purchased a collection of E.St.V.M. (this, I now read, her preferred abbreviation). Here is one that ought to be part of this group.


THURSDAY

And if I loved you Wednesday,
Well, what is that to you?
I do not love you Thursday --
So much is true.

And why you come complaining
Is more than I can see.
I loved you Wednesday, -- yes -- but what
Is that to me?

Bookmarking, now I've discovered this!

I need to do some more relaxed reading to appreciate more fully.

KP

This poem is by Veronica Franko who was a Courtesan.


Reason and love are contrary to each other,
and whoever expects to predict love's course
is befeft of wit and deprived of reason.
So there is all the more cause to value
your declaration, in which you've resolved
to hold virtue in highest esteem,
and though, in truth, I lack that quality,
my desire to possess it, with you, is strong enough
that I expect a reward for my good will:
and, if fear of my true self assails me,
it makes me hope, too, in spirit of my few merits,
that it may be a blessing to choose a lesser evil.
I do not claim that I could attain,
by winning your love, suffifient virtue
to raise to such a lofty goal,
but I do know that a gallant soul,
finding a man who hates lies and follow truth,
makes her way toward him with delight:
and all the more if in a heart that's sincere
she finds affection, full of truest faith,
as in mind, which I hope to show you one day,
if powerlessness does not rein in my desires.

Wonderful posting, Bluxx, thanks! I love this... truly in the spirit of Edna.

The first best line (oh, they're all good... but):




Oh, honesty above all!

This is a REALLY REALLY long once. Just so ya know. It's worth the read though.

I said: "My heart, if my own weapons
do this to me, what will those do
with which cruel fortune peirces me?"
If myself fell, having fled far from my love,
the pain closes in on me ever more,
that my leaving brings it closer to me,
I must surely have taken medicine opposed
to my languid state and to my heart's raving,
which sends me down a miserable path.
Alas, I repent now the error I made,
or rather, no sooner had I left behind
the cherished place where my love dwells,
than I said: "Woe is me! Can it be really true
that I am leaving this city and these seas
where my sun in his splendor dims all other lights?"
And if I could repeat the words that I said,
turning back to look at my beloved land,
as anyone leaving what she loves is bound to say,
I would see again the birds following me,
in their slow flight to hear my lament,
answering my pain with their tender voices;
I would see the wind almost stop to listen,
and the storms die down and the woods and stones moved to compassion for my torment.
But my spirits, from wailing too much,
are sad and weary, so that now i have moved
the fish and the waves to lament my woes with me.
Adria's shores have fewer grains of sand
than the number of times I then called his name,
just as now I call it here, where only Echo responds.
With sighs, I burned and with tears I bathed his dear garments, and in his place I held them to my breast and hugged and kissed them,
saying "Oh, my garments that were once
wrapped around those limbs of his,
limbs that were taken from Narcissus by Mars,
if heaven ever leads me back to that place from which I foolishly took my leave,
never will I turn my firm step to depart."
There was neither stone nor plant, where I went,
that did not weep for me and perhaps say, "Madwoman! Where are you going?"
From the farthest circle where the stars
make their sparkling abode, they clearly revealed
that even the night was weeping with me.
I did see the sun rise, shining and bright,
but since a more beautiful light was impressed
on my heart and mind to dazzle my eyes,
the sun seemed to lack its usual splendor,
or perhaps on my hearing my bitter lament,
even it turned pale in response to my grief.
Oh, how mindless and how self-deceptive
is the man who, though he could happily live
in the hear of his country, his beloved at his side,
goes on a search from one shore to another
thinking perhaps that distance can be
a safe refuge from the blows of love!
Let a man flee, if he knows how;
the memory of his beloved always surrounds him;
indeed, he carries her image alive in his heart.
If I see dawn leading the day to us,
looking at the flowers and the vermilion roses
the circle her forhead and her lovely hair,
"Such," I say, "Is my love's handsome face,
where heaven bestowed us all of its gifts,
and nature most reveals her perfection."
Then when I see through the dark night
so many stars light up in the sky,
Love, who is with me, assures me and swears
that lose lights in the sky; fair and everlasting,
are not as numerous as the virtues of a man
who ruthlessly tears the soul from my breast.
And to make my days even sadder and darker,
far from my light, I always carry alive in my heart the burning sun from which I once caught fire,
to whom, weeping and sighting, I write.

-Veronica Franco

Wow, Bluxx. Thanks. These poems, this last poem... just fabulous. Wherever did you find them?? This seems so finely-written and full of exact feelings that people have. I love the thought of the slow lament with the birds... that even the stones are moved to compassion. It is great to read, can you imagine it being read aloud??? Thank you so much!.

[I responded once, but it didn't "catch." I've tried to repeat myself, if you get both... oh well!]

Piffka
Thanks for steering me back to this thread.

Bluxx
I especially love the lines:

". . . I would see again the birds following me,
in their slow flight to hear my lament,
answering my pain with their tender voices;
I would see the wind almost stop to listen,
and the storms die down and the woods and stones moved to compassion for my torment.
But my spirits, from wailing too much,
are sad and weary, so that now i have moved
the fish and the waves to lament my woes with me. . ."


Piffka said it: Wow!

Yesterday was ESVM's birthday.

She deserves to be remembered.

I used to like her poetry until Piffka taught me to love it.

So, I spent some time today looking around for a suitable commemorative poem. But couldn't find one -in myself or elsewhere.

I finally selected one of hers: (I keep coming BACK to this poem)



'Dirge Without Music'

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains - but the best is lost.
The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love -
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
--ESVM