“it’s full of flowers and heart-shaped boxes / and things we’re all too young to know”

[larryhammer]

Will I get tired of sonnetting a la Millay for Poetry Monday? One day, perhaps, but today is not that day:


“Read history: thus learn how small a space,” Edna St. V. Millay

Read history: thus learn how small a space
You may inhabit, nor inhabit long
In crowding Cosmos—in that confined place
Work boldly; build your flimsy barriers strong;
Turn round and round, make warm your nest; among
The other hunting beasts, keep heart and face,—
Not to betray the doomed and splendid race
You are so proud of, to which you belong.
For trouble comes to all of us: the rat
Has courage, in adversity, to fight;
But what a shining animal is man,
Who knows, when pain subsides, that is not that,
For worse than that must follow—yet can write
Music; can laugh; play tennis; even plan.


This is a companion to one called “Read history: so learn your place in Time.” Personally, I compare it to Auden's "Spain 1936"

---L.

Subject quote from The Book of Love, Magnetic Fields.

Comments

[mount_oregano]

Thank you for the poem, and the recommendations, which I read, and now I want to write my own sonnet, which I will enjoy doing.

[larryhammer]

Have fun sonnetting! (I usually do.)