Explore "Only the Diamond" by Edna St. Vincent Millay on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Only the diamond and the diamond's dust
Can render up the diamond unto Man; One and invulnerable as it began
Had it endured, but for the treacherous thrust
That laid its hard heart open, as it must, / And ground it down and fitted it to span
A turbaned brow or fret an ivory fan, / Lopped of its stature, pared of its proper crust.
So Man, by all the wheels of heaven unscored, / Man, the stout ego, the exuberant mind
No edge could cleave, no acid could consume,-
Being split along the vein by his own kind, / Gives over, rolls upon the palm abhorred, / Is set in brass on the swart thumb of Doom .