April is National Poetry Month! Edna St. Vincent Millay: Sonnets From an Ungrafted Tree

Not all love is good love.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, excerpts from Sonnets From An Ungrafted Tree.


IX

Not over-kind nor quick in study
Nor skilled in sports nor beautiful was he,
Who had come into her life when anybody
Would have been welcome, so in need was she.
They have become acquainted in this way:
He flashed a mirror in her eyes at school;
By which he was distinguished; from that day
They went about together as a rule.
She told, in secret and with whispering,
How he had flashed a mirror in her eyes;
And as she told, it struck her with surprise
That this was not so wonderful a thing.
But what's the odds?--It's pretty nice to know
You've got a friend to keep you company everywhere you go.


X

She had forgotten how the August night
Was level as a lake beneath the moon,
In which she swam a little, losing sight
Of shore; and how the boy, who was at noon
Simple enough, not different from the rest,
Wore now a pleasant mystery as he went,
Which seemed to her an honest enough test
Whether she loved him, and she was content.
So loud, so loud the million crickets' choir...
So sweet the night the night, so long-drawn-out and late...
And if the man were not her spirit's mate,
why was her body sluggish with desire?
Stark on the open field the moonlight fell,
But the oak tree's shadow was deep and black and secret as a well.