Maggie's FarmWe are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for. |
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Saturday, May 26. 2012Verse for Decoration Day weekend: Edna St. Vincent MillayDirge Without Music I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you. The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love, Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave Thanks, reader, for highlighting this piece. You can read about Millay's colorful life at Wiki, where it says:
Some things never change. Photo: Millay in 1914. Comments
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BD, is it cool if I steal your inspiration and post this at my site?
Thanks, Jephnol Of course! Our only mission is to throw stuff out into the world.
That’s right, we should get together to stop all these stuff from the world and in making peace on the entire world.
I appreciate that your thought and pointed topic, I always with you in that good thing. Edna could send one out into the far seats--let it hang there and then sink solidyly in to the hungry glove of a trusting heart. Nobody does it better!
The rain, I said, is kind to come
and speak to me in my new home. I would I were alive again To kiss the fingers of the rain, To drink into my eyes the shine Of every slanting silver line, To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze From drenched and dripping apple trees. For soon the shower will be done, And then the broad face of the sun Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth Until the world with answering mirth shakes joyously, and each round drop Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top. How can I bear it; buried here, While overhead the sky grows clear And blue again after the storm? O, multi-colored, multiform, Beloved beauty over me, That I shall never, never see Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold, That I shall never more behold! Sleeping your myriad magics through, Close-sepulchred away from you! O God, I cried, give me new birth, And put me back upon the earth! Upset each cloud's gigantic gourd And let the heavy rain, down-poured In one big torrent, set me free, Washing my grave away from me! Extracted from Renascence (1911) by Edna St Vincent Millay BD,
Your Ezra Pound link goes back to this page, needs fixin.' You should do a piece on Pound, a despicable vermin if there ever was one. He reminds me of several talking heads in today's MSM – where he would fit right in. She caught more grief for supporting freedom, than Pound did for supporting evil. So some things just don't change, do thay?
We love this verse of Millay's "I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground." When my husband's mother died a few years ago at the age of 98, it was recited at her funeral. I plan to have it recited at Downs' funeral, and at mine. It says everything, both quietly and beautifully. Thanks, Bird Dog, for printing it today for all the loving hearts we lost in defense of our country.
Marianne It just sounds like someone talking. Then you look at it, and it scans. Like Robert Frost - she shows how to get natural effects while respecting meter and rhyme.
I've always felt she was very under-rated. I thought it might be because formal verse is looked down on. I'm appalled to think it might be for her support of the allies.
Link to this coming from my blog. The rhyme scheme (ab) is unnoticeable, and the lines scan perfectly and naturally. A particularly fine example of what a poem should be.
Very nice photograph --her beauty, the story, the graphic design, and the other world of symbol, all harmonizing across the senses, like music. The interlocking maze of Magnolia growing toward her the picture of her poetry sorting into humane language.
Almost too painful to read.
Some truths are best unspoken. Anticipates Dylan Thomas, who wrote: Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light. |
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