The Singing-Woman from the Wood's Edge / Edna St. Vincent Millay

What should I be but a prophet and a liar,

Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?

Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,

What should I be but the fiend's god-daughter?

And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog,

That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog?

And what should be my singing, that was christened at an altar,

But Aves and Credos and Psalms out of the Psalter?

The Poet And His Book / Edna St. Vincent Millay

Down, you mongrel, Death!

Back into your kennel!

I have stolen breath

In a stalk of fennel!

You shall scratch and you shall whine

Many a night, and you shall worry

Many a bone, before you bury

One sweet bone of mine!

The Blue-Flag In The Bog / Edna St. Vincent Millay

God had called us, and we came;

Our loved Earth to ashes left;

Heaven was a neighbor's house,

Open to us, bereft.

Gay the lights of Heaven showed,

And 'twas God who walked ahead;

Yet I wept along the road,

Wanting my own house instead.

Renascence / Edna St. Vincent Millay

All I could see from where I stood

Was three long mountains and a wood;

I turned and looked another way,

And saw three islands in a bay.

So with my eyes I traced the line

Of the horizon, thin and fine,

Straight around till I was come

Back to where I'd started from;

Afternoon on a Hill / Edna St. Vincent Millay

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.