Explore "English Sparrows" by Edna St. Vincent Millay on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
(Washington Square)
How sweet the sound in the city an hour before sunrise, / When the park is empty and grey and the light clear and so lovely / I must sit on the floor before my open window for an hour with my arms on the sill
And my cheek on my arm, watching the spring sky's / Soft suffusion from the roofed horizon upward with palest rose, / Doting on the charming sight with eyes / Open, eyes closed;
Breathing with quiet pleasure the cool air cleansed by the night, lacking all will / To let such happiness go, nor thinking the least thing ill
In me for such indulgence, pleased with the day and with myself. How sweet / The noisy chirping of the urchin sparrows from crevice and shelf
Under my window, and from down there in the street, / Announcing the advance of the roaring competitive day with city bird-song.
A bumbling bus / Goes under the arch. A man bareheaded and alone
Walks to a bench and sits down.
He breathes the morning with me; his thoughts are his own.
Together we watch the first magnanimous / Rays of the sun on the tops of greening trees and on houses of red brick and of stone.