Second April: EXILED by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Searching my heart for its true sorrow,

This is the thing I find to be:

That I am weary of words and people, / Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness / Of the strong wind and shattered spray; / Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound / Of the big surf that breaks all day.

Always before about my dooryard, / Marking the reach of the winter sea, / Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood, / Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea;

Always I climbed the wave at morning, / Shook the sand from my shoes at night, / That now am caught beneath great buildings, / Stricken with noise, confused with light.

If I could hear the green piles groaning / Under the windy wooden piers, / See once again the bobbing barrels, / And the black sticks that fence the weirs,

If I could see the weedy mussels / Crusting the wrecked and rotting hulls, / Hear once again the hungry crying / Overhead, of the wheeling gulls,

Feel once again the shanty straining / Under the turning of the tide, / Fear once again the rising freshet, / Dread the bell in the fog outside, --

I should be happy, -- that was happy / All day long on the coast of Maine! / I have a need to hold and handle / Shells and anchors and ships again!

I should be happy, that am happy / Never at all since I came here. / I am too long away from water. / I have a need of water near.