Explore "Portrait" by Edna St. Vincent Millay on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Over and over I have heard, / As now I hear it, / Your voice harsh and light as the scratching of dry leaves over the hard ground, / Your voice forever assailed and shaken by the wind from the island / Of illustrious living and dead, that never dies down, / And bending at moment s under the terrible weight of the perfect word, / Here in this room without fire, without comfort of any kind, / Reading aloud to me immortal page after page conceived in a mortal mind.
Beauty at such moments before me like a wild bright bird / Has been in the room, and eyed me, and let me come near it.
I could not ever nor can I to this day / Acquaint you with the triumph and the sweet rest
These hours have brought to me and always bring,- / Rapture, coloured like the wild bird's neck and wing, / Comfort, softer than the feathers of its breast.
Always, and even now, when I rise to go, / Your eyes blaze out from a face gone wickedly pale;
I try to tell you what I would have you know,- / What peace it was; you cry me down; you scourge me with a salty flail;
You will not have it so.