To a Young Girl by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Shall I despise you that your colourless tears / Made rainbows in your lashes, and you forgot to weep?

Would we were half so wise, that eke a grief out / By sitting in the dark, until we fall asleep.

I only fear lest, being by nature sunny, / By and by you will weep no more at all, / And fall asleep in the light, having lost with the tears / The colour in the lashes that comes as the tears fall.

I would not have you darken your lids with weeping, / Beautiful eyes, but I would have you weep enough / To wet the fingers of the hand held over the eye-lids, / And stain a little the light frock's delicate stuff.

For there came into my mind, as I watched you winking the tears down, / Laughing faces, blown from the west and the east, / Faces lovely and proud that I have prized and cherished;

Nor were the loveliest among them those that had wept the least.