埃德娜·圣·文森特·米莱诗24首

Edna St. Vincent Millay was a popular poet, known for her Bohemian (unconventional) lifestyle. She was also a playwright and actress. She lived from February 22, 1892 to October 19, 1950. She sometimes published as Nancy Boyd, E. Vincent Millay, or Edna St. Millay. Her poetry, rather traditional in form but adventurous in content, reflected her life in dealing forthrightly with sex and independence in women. A nature mysticism pervades much of her work.埃德娜·圣文森特米莱（美国诗人和剧作家，1892年2月22日出生，美国缅因州洛克兰德市——1950年10月19日在纽约奥斯特利茨逝世），是一位受欢迎的诗人，以其放荡不羁（非传统）的生活方式而闻名。她也是一个剧作家和演员。她生活在1892年2月22日至1950年10月19日。她有时以南希·博伊德、E·文森特·米莱或埃德娜·圣米莱的名义出版。她的诗歌形式传统，内容大胆，反映了她直率地处理女性的性和独立性的生活。她的作品中弥漫着大自然的神秘主义。在20世纪20年代成为浪漫主义反叛和虚张声势的化身。

Early Years

Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in 1892. Her mother, Cora Buzzelle Millay, was a nurse, and her father, Henry Tolman Millay, a teacher.

Millay's parents divorced in 1900 when she was eight, reportedly because of her father's gambling habits. She and her two younger sisters were raised by their mother in Maine, where she developed an interest in literature and began writing poetry.

埃德娜·圣文森特米莱生于1892年。她的母亲科拉·伯塞尔·米莱是一名护士，她的父亲亨利·托尔曼·米莱是一名教师。1900年，米莱8岁时父母离婚，据说是因为她父亲的赌博习惯。她和她的两个妹妹在缅因州由母亲抚养长大，在那里她对文学产生了兴趣，开始写诗。

Early Poems and Education

By the age of 14, she was publishing poetry in the children's magazine, St. 

Nicholas,and read an original piece for her high school graduation from Camden High School in Camden, Maine.

Three years after graduation, she followed her mother's advice and submitted a long poem to a contest. When the anthology of selected poems was published, her poem, "Renascence," won critical praise.

On the basis of this poem, she won a scholarship to Vassar, spending a semester at Barnard in preparation. She continued to write and publish poetry while in college, and also enjoyed the experience of living among so many intelligent, spirited, and independent young women.14岁时，她就在儿童杂志《圣彼得堡》上发表诗歌。她在缅因州卡姆登的卡姆登高中读高中毕业论文。毕业三年后，她听从母亲的建议，向一次竞赛提交了一首长诗。《诗选》出版后，她的诗《重生》赢得了批评界的赞誉。在这首诗的基础上，她获得了瓦萨的奖学金，在巴纳德度过了一个学期的准备工作。在大学期间，她继续写诗和出版诗歌，也很享受与许多聪明、活泼、独立的年轻女性生活在一起的经历。

New York

Soon after graduation from Vassar in 1917, she published her first volume of poetry, including "Renascence." It was not particularly financially successful, though it won critical approval, and so she moved with one of her sisters to New York, hoping to become an actress. She moved to Greenwich Village, and soon became part of the literary and intellectual scene in the Village. She had many lovers, both female and male, while she struggled to make money with her writing.1917年从瓦萨毕业后不久，她出版了包括《重生》在内的第一本诗集，虽然获得了评论界的认可，但在经济上并不特别成功，因此她和她的一个姐妹搬到了纽约，希望成为一名演员。她搬到了格林威治村，很快成为村里文学和知识分子的一部分。她有很多情人，有男有女，而她却努力靠写作赚钱。

Publishing Success

After 1920, she began to publish mostly in Vanity Fair, thanks to editor Edmund Wilson who later proposed marriage to Millay. Publishing in Vanity Fair meant more public notice and a bit more financial success. A play and a poetry prize were accompanied by illness, but in 1921, another Vanity Fair editor arranged to pay her regularly for writing she would send from a trip to Europe.1920年后，她开始主要在《名利场》发表文章，多亏了编辑埃德蒙·威尔逊，后者后来向米莱求婚。在名利场出版意味着更多的公众关注和更多的经济成功。一部戏剧和一个诗歌奖都伴随着疾病，但在1921年，《名利场》的另一位编辑安排她定期为她从欧洲旅行中寄来的作品付款。

In 1923, her poetry won the Pulitzer Prize, and she returned to New York, where she met and quickly married a wealthy Dutch businessman, Eugen Boissevain, who supported her writing and took care of her through many illnesses. Boissevain had earlier been married to Inez Milholland Boissevain, dramatic woman suffrage proponent who died in 1917. They had no children.1923年，她的诗歌获得普利策奖，她回到纽约，在那里她遇到了一位富有的荷兰商人，尤金·博伊塞万，她支持她写作并照顾她度过了许多疾病。博伊塞万早前与伊内兹·米尔霍兰德·博伊塞万结婚，这位戏剧性的女性选举权支持者于1917年去世。他们没有孩子。

In following years, Edna St. Vincent Millay found that performances where she recited her poetry were sources of income. She also became more involved in social causes, including women's rights and defending Sacco and Vanzetti.在接下来的几年里，埃德娜·圣文森特米莱发现，她朗诵诗歌的表演是收入的来源。维权和维权也越来越多地涉及到妇女和妇女的社会事业中。

Later Years: Social Concern and Ill Health

In the 1930s, her poetry reflects her growing social concern and her grief over her mother's death. A car accident in 1936 and general ill health slowed her writing. The rise of Hitler disturbed her, and then the invasion of Holland by the Nazis cut off her husband's income. She also lost many close friends to death in the 1930s and 1940s. She had a nervous breakdown in 1944.在20世纪30年代，她的诗歌反映了她对社会日益关注和对母亲去世的悲痛。1936年的一场车祸和普遍的身体不适使她的写作速度减慢。希特勒的崛起使她心烦意乱，接着纳粹入侵荷兰切断了她丈夫的收入。上世纪三四十年代，她也失去了许多亲密的朋友，1944年她精神崩溃。

After her husband died in 1949, she continued to write, but died herself the next year. A last volume of poetry was published posthumously.1949年丈夫去世后，她继续写作，但第二年她自己也去世了。最后一卷诗作是在死后出版的。

Key works:

• "Renascence" (1912)

• Renascence and Other Poems (1917)

• A Few Figs from Thistles (1920)

• Second April (1921)

• The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems (1923)

• The King's Henchman (1927)

• The Buck in the Snow and Other Poems (1928)

• Fatal Interview (1931)

• Wine from These Grapes (1934)

• Conversation at Midnight (1937)

• Huntsman, What Quarry? (1939)

• Make Bright the Arrows (1940)

• The Murder of Lidice (1942)

• Mine the Harvest (published 1954)

Selected Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotations

• Let us forget such words, and all they mean,
as Hatred, Bitterness and Rancor,
Greed, Intolerance, Bigotry.
Let us renew our faith and pledge to Man
his right to be Himself,
and free.

• Not Truth, but Faith it is that keeps the world alive.

• I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.

• I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much I will not map him
the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living
That I should deliver men to death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me.
Never through me shall you be overcome.
I shall die, but that is all I shall do for death.

• Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.

• The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.

• God, I can push the grass apart
And lay my finger on thy heart!

• Don't stand so near me!
I am become a socialist. I love
Humanity; but I hate people.
(character Pierrot in Aria da Capo, 1919)

• There is no God.
But it does not matter.
Man is enough.

• My candle burns at both ends...

• It is not true that life is one damn thing after another. It’s one damn thing over and over.

• [John Ciardi about Edna St. Vincent Millay] It was not as a craftsman nor as an influence, but as the creator of her own legend that she was most alive for us. Her success was as a figure of passionate living.（By Jone Johnson Lewis）

Selected Poems

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Afternoon on a Hill

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.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!

Ashes of Life

Love has gone and left me, and the days are all alike.
Eat I must, and sleep I will - and would that night were here!
But ah, to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!
Would that it were day again, with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me, and I don't know what to do;
This or that or what you will is all the same to me;
But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through -
There's little use in anything as far as I can see.

Love has gone and left me, and the neighbors knock and borrow,
And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse.
And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow
There's this little street and this little house.

God's World

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists that roll and rise!
Thy woods this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart, -- Lord, I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me, -- let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

When the Year Grows Old

I cannot but remember
When the year grows old --
October -- November --
How she disliked the cold!

She used to watch the swallows
Go down across the sky,
And turn from the window
With a little sharp sigh.

And often when the brown leaves
Were brittle on the ground,
And the wind in the chimney
Made a melancholy sound,

She had a look about her
That I wish I could forget --
The look of a scared thing
Sitting in a net!

Oh, beautiful at nightfall
The soft spitting snow!
And beautiful the bare boughs
Rubbing to and fro!

But the roaring of the fire,
And the warmth of fur,
And the boiling of the kettle
Were beautiful to her!

I cannot but remember
When the year grows old --
October -- November --
How she disliked the cold!

Spring

TO what purpose, April, do you return again? 

Beauty is not enough. 

You can no longer quiet me with the redness 

Of little leaves opening stickily. 

I know what I know. 

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe 

The spikes of the crocus. 

The smell of the earth is good. 

It is apparent that there is no death. 

But what does that signify? 

Not only under ground are the brains of men 

Eaten by maggots. 

Life in itself 

Is nothing, 

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. 

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill, 

April 

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. 

City Trees

THE trees along this city street 

Save for the traffic and the trains, 

Would make a sound as thin and sweet 

As trees in country lanes.

And people standing in their shade 

Out of a shower, undoubtedly 

Would hear such music as is made 

Upon a country tree.

Oh, little leaves that are so dumb 

Against the shrieking city air, 

I watch you when the wind has come,-- 

I know what sound is there.

Journey

AH, could I lay me down in this long grass 

And close my eyes, and let the quite wind 

Blow over me--I am so tired, so tired 

Of passing pleasant places! All my life, 

Following Care along the dusty road, 

Have I looked back at loveliness and sighed; 

Yet at my hand an unrelenting hand 

Tugged ever, as I passed. All my life long 

Over my shoulder have I looked at peace; 

And now I would fain lie in this long grass 

And close my eyes.

Yet Onward! 

Cat-birds call 

Through the long afternoon, and creeks at dusk 

Are gutteral. Whip-poor-wills wake and cry, 

Drawing the twilight close about their throats. 

Only my heart makes answer. Eager vines 

Go up the r7ocks and wait; flushed apple-trees 

Pause in their dance and break the ring for me; 

Dim, shady wood-roads, redolent of fern 

And bayberry, that through sweet bevies thread 

Of round-faced roses, pink and petulant, 

Look back and beckon ere they dissappear. 

Only my heart, only my heat responds.

Yet, ah, my path is sweet on either side 

All through the dragging day,--sharp underfoot 

And hot, and like dead mist the dry dust hangs-- 

But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach, 

And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling, 

The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake, 

Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road; 

A gateless garden, and an open path; 

My feet to follow, and my heart to behold. 

Eel-grass

NO matter what I say, 

All that I really love 

Is the rain that flattens on the bay, 

And the eel-grass in the cove; 

The jingle-shells that lie on the beach 

At the tide-line, and the trace 

Of higher tides along the beach: 

Nothing in this place. 

Weeds

WHITE with daisies and red with sorrel 

And empty, empty under the sky!-- 

Life is a quest and love a quarrel-- 

Here is a place for me to lie.

Daisies dpring from damnèd seeds, 

And this red fire that here I see 

Is a worthless crop of crimson weeds, 

Cursed by farmers thriftily.

But here, unhated for an hour, 

The sorrel runs in ragged flame, 

The daisy stands, a bastard flower, 

Like flowers that bear an honest name.

And here a while, where no wind brings 

The baying of a pack athirst, 

May sleep the sleep of blessèd things, 

The blood too bright, the brow accurst. 

Passer Mortuus Est

DEATH devours all lovely things: 

Lesbia with her sparrow 

Shares the darkness,--presently 

Every bed is narrow.

Unremembered as old rain 

Dries the sheer libation; 

And the little petulant hand 

Is an annotation.

After all, my erstwhile dear, 

My no longer cherished, 

Need we say it was not love, 

Just because it perished? 

Assault

I HAD forgotten how the frogs must sound 

After a year of silence, else I think 

I should not have ventured forth alone 

At dusk along this unfrequented road.

I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk 

Between me and the crying of the frogs? 

Oh, saavage Beauty, suffer me to pass, 

That am a timid woman, on her way 

From one house to another! 

Travel

THE railroad track is miles away, 

And the day is loud with voices speaking, 

Yet there isn't a train goes by all day 

But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn't a train goes by, 

Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming, 

But I see its cinders red on the sky, 

And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with the friends I make, 

And better friends I'll not be knowing; 

Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take, 

No matter where it's going. 

Song of a Second April

APRIL this year, not otherwise 

Than April of a year ago 

Is full of whispers, full of sighs, 

Dazzling mud and dingy snow; 

Hepaticas that pleased you so 

Are here again, and butterflies.

There rings a hammering all day, 

And shingles lie about the doors; 

From orchards near and far away 

The gray wood-pecker taps and bores, 

And men are merry at their chores, 

And children earnest at their play.

The larger streams run still and deep; 

Noisy and swift the small brooks run. 

Among the mullein stalks the sheep 

Go up the hillside in the sun 

Pensively; only you are gone, 

You that alone I cared to keep. 

Rosemary

FOR the sake of some things 

That be now no more 

I will strew rushes 

On my chamber-floor, 

I will plant bergamot 

At my kitchen-door.

For the sake of dim things 

That were once so plain 

I will set a barrel 

Out to catch the rain, 

I will hang an iron pot 

on an iron crane.

Many things be dead and gone 

That were brave and gay; 

For the sake of these things 

I will learn to say, 

"An it please you, gentle sirs," 

"Alack! and "Well-a-day!" 

Alms 

MY heart is what it was before 

A house where people come and go, 

But it is winter with your love: 

The sashes are beset with snow. 

I light the lamp and lay the cloth, 

I blow the coals to blaze again, 

But it is winter with your love: 

The frost is thick upon the pane. 

I know a winter when it comes: 

The leaves are listless on the boughs. 

I watched your love a little while, 

And brought my plants into the house. 

I water them and turn them south, 

And snap the dead brown from the stem, 

But it is winter with your love: 

I only tend and water them. 

There was a time I stood and watched 

The small, ill-natured sparrows' fray; 

I loved the beggar that I fed, 

I cared for what he had to say, 

I stood and watched him out of sight; 

Today I reach around the door 

And set the bowl upon the step. 

My heart is what it was before, 

But it is winter with your love: 

I scatter crumbs upon the sill, 

And close the window--and the birds 

May take or leave them, as they will. 

Inland

PEOPLE that build their houses inland, 

People that buy a plot of ground 

Shaped like a house, and build a house there, 

Far from the sea-board, far from the sound 

Of water sucking the hollow ledges, 

Tons of water striking the shore-- 

What do they long for, as I long for 

One salt smell of the sea once more? 

People the waves have not awakened, 

Spanking the boats at the harbor's head, 

What do they long for, as I long for,-- 

Starting up in my inland bed, 

Beating the narrow walls, and finding 

Neither a window nor a door, 

Screaming to God for death by drowning-- 

One salt taste of the sea once more? 

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. 

Mariposa

BUTTERFLIES are white and blue 

In this field we wander through. 

Suffer me to take your hand. 

Death comes in a day or two.

All the things we ever knew 

Will be ashes in that hour: 

Mark the transient butterfly, 

How he hangs upon the flower.

Suffer em to take your hand. 

Suffer me to cherish you 

Till the dawn is in the sky. 

Whether I be false or true, 

Death comes in a day or two. 

Lament 

LISTEN, children, 

Your father is dead. 

From his old coats 

I'll make you little jackets; 

I'll make you little trousers 

From his old pants. 

There'll be in his pockets 

Things he used to put there: 

Keys and pennies 

Covered with tobacco. 

Dan shall have the pennies 

To save in his bank; 

Anne shall have the keys 

To make a pretty noise with. 

Life must go on 

And the dead be forgotten; 

Life must go on 

Though good men die. 

Anne, eat your breakfast; 

Dan, take your medicine. 

Life must go on; 

I forget just why. 

The Death of Autumn

WHEN reeds are dead and straw to thatch the marshes, 

And feathered pampas-grass rides into the wind 

Like Agèd warriors westward, tragic, thinned 

Of half their tribe; an over the flattened rushes, 

Stripped of its secret, open, stark and bleak, 

Blackens afar the half-forgotten creek,-- 

Then leans on me the weight of the year, and crushes 

My heart. I know that beauty must ail and die, 

And will be born again, --but ah, to see 

Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky! 

Oh, Autumn! Autumn! --What is the Spring to me? 

Into the Golden Vessel

INTO the golden vessel of great song 

Let us pour all our passion; breast to breast 

Let other lovers lie, in love and rest; 

Not we,--articulate, so, but with the tongue 

Of all the world: the churning blood, the long 

Shuddering quiet, the desperate hot palms pressed 

Sharply together upon the escaping guest, 

The common soul, unguarded, and grown strong. 

Longing alone is singer to the lute; 

Let still on nettles in the open sigh 

The minstrel, that in slumber is as mute 

As any man, and love be far and high, 

That else forsakes the topmost branch, a fruit 

Found on the ground by every passer-by. 

Once More Into My Arid Days

ONCE more into my arid days like dew, 

Like wind from an oasis, or the sound 

Of cold sweet water bubbling underground, 

A treacherous messenger--the thought of you 

Comes to destroy me; once more I renew 

Firm faith in your abundance, whom I found 

Long since to be but just one other mound 

Of sand, whereon no green thing ever grew. 

And once again, and wiser is no wise, 

I chase your colored phantom on the air, 

And sob and curse and fall and weep and rise 

And stumble pitifully on to where, 

Miserable and lost, with stinging eyes, 

Once more I clasp--and there is nothing there. 

When I Too Long Have Looked Upon Your Face

WHEN I too long have looked upon your face, 

Wherein for me a brightness unobscured 

Save by the mists of brightness has its place, 

And terrible beauty not to be endured, 

I turn away reluctant from your light, 

And stand irresolute, a mind undone, 

A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight 

From having looked too long upon the sun. 

Then is my daily life a narrow room 

In which a little while, uncertainly, 

Surrounded by impenetrable gloom, 

Among familiar things grown strange to me 

Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark, 

Till I become accustomed to the dark. 

Only until this cigarette is ended...

ONLY until this cigarette is ended 

A little moment at the end of all, 

While on the floor the quiet ashes fall, 

And in the firelight to a lance extended, 

Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended, 

The broken shadow dances on the wall, 

I will permit my memory to recall 

The vision of you, by all my dreams attended. 

And then adieu, -- farewell! -- the dream is done. 

Yours is a face of which I can forget 

The colour and the features, every one, 

The words not ever, and the smiles not yet; 

But in your day this moment is the sun 

Upon a hill, after the sun has set. 

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