“I bid you but be;/ I have need not of prayer;/ I have need of you free/ As your mouths of mine air”

For Poetry Monday, Millay goes deep Romantic:


“Not that it matters, not that my heart’s cry,” Edna St. V. Millay

Not that it matters, not that my heart’s cry
Is potent to deflect our common doom,
Or bind to truce in this ambiguous room
The planets of the atom as they ply;
But only to record that you and I,
Like thieves that scratch the jewels from a tomb,
Have gathered delicate love in hardy bloom
Close under Chaos,—I rise to testify.
This is my testament: that we are taken;
Our colors are as clouds before the wind;
Yet for a moment stood the foe forsaken,
Eyeing Love’s favor to our helmet pinned;
Death is our master,—but his seat is shaken;
He rides victorious,—but his ranks are thinned.


---L.

Subject quote from Hertha, Algernon Swinburne.