Well, friends it’s April. I am biting at the bit to post a little Mary Oliver from her brand new book of poems: Red Bird.
Alas, I fell in love with this Edna St. Vincent Millay poem just today. The subject is a little melancholy perhaps but how
she finds her personal footing within something we all will and do face, is inspiring to me.
I hope you enjoy it on some level.
Love, Bethie
Dirge Without Music
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the
hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains,-but the best is lost.
The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter the
love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and
curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not
approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in
the world.
Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay
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