A Few Figs from Thistles | Page 6

are days
With weeping for your sake?
And what are you that, missing you,
As many days as crawl
I
should be listening to the wind
And looking at the wall?
I know a man that's a braver man
And twenty men as kind,
And
what are you, that you should be
The one man in my mind?
Yet women's ways are witless ways,
As any sage will tell,--
And
what am I, that I should love
So wisely and so well?
Four Sonnets
I
Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,
And drag me at your
chariot till I die,--
Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts!--
Yet
hear me tell how in their throats they lie
Who shout you mighty: thick
about my hair
Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr
Who still
am free, unto no querulous care
A fool, and in no temple worshiper!

I, that have bared me to your quiver's fire,
Lifted my face into its
puny rain,
Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire
As you are
Powerless to Elicit Pain!
(Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave,

Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!)
II

I think I should have loved you presently,
And given in earnest words
I flung in jest;
And lifted honest eyes for you to see,
And caught
your hand against my cheek and breast;
And all my pretty follies
flung aside
That won you to me, and beneath your gaze,
Naked of
reticence and shorn of pride,
Spread like a chart my little wicked
ways.
I, that had been to you, had you remained,
But one more
waking from a recurrent dream,
Cherish no less the certain stakes I
gained,
And walk your memory's halls, austere, supreme,
A ghost
in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or
two.
III
Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow!
Faithless am I save to love's self
alone.
Were you not lovely I would leave you now;
After the feet of
beauty fly my own.
Were you not still my hunger's rarest food,
And
water ever to my wildest thirst,
I would desert you--think not but I
would!--
And seek another as I sought you first.
But you are mobile
as the veering air,
And all your charms more changeful than the tide,

Wherefore to be inconstant is no care:
I have but to continue at
your side.
So wanton, light and false, my love, are you,
I am most
faithless when I most am true.
IV
I shall forget you presently, my dear,
So make the most of this, your
little day,
Your little month, your little half a year,
Ere I forget, or
die, or move away,
And we are done forever; by and by
I shall
forget you, as I said, but now,
If you entreat me with your loveliest lie

I will protest you with my favorite vow.
I would indeed that love
were longer-lived,
And oaths were not so brittle as they are,
But so
it is, and nature has contrived
To struggle on without a break thus
far,--
Whether or not we find what we are seeking
Is idle,
biologically speaking.

End of the Project Gutenberg Etext of A few Figs from Thistles by
Edna St. Vincent Millay
from http://www.dertz.in/