Those Hours by Edna St. Vincent Millay — Read

Those hours when happy hours were my estate,-

Entailed, as proper, for the next in line, / Yet mine the harvest, and the title mine- Those acres, fertile, and the furrow straight, / From which the lark would rise-all of my late

Enchantments, still, in brilliant colours, shine, / But striped with black, the tulip, lawn and vine, / Like gardens looked at through an iron gate. Yet not as one who never sojourned there

I view the lovely segments of a past

I lived with all my senses, well aware

That this was perfect, and it would not last:

I smell the flower, though vacuum-still the air; I feel its texture, though the gate is fast.