Explore "The Return" by Edna St. Vincent Millay on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Earth does not understand her child, / Who from the loud gregarious town
Returns, depleted and defiled, / To the still woods, to fling him down.
Earth can not count the sons she bore: / The wounded lynx, the wounded man
Come trailing blood unto her door;
/ She shelters both as best she can.
But she is early up and out, / To trim the year or strip its bones;
She has no time to stand about / Talking of him in undertones
Who has no aim but to forget, / Be left in peace, be lying thus
For days, for years, for centuries yet, / Unshaven and anonymous;
Who, marked for failure, dulled by grief, / Has traded in his wife and friend
For this warm ledge, this alder leaf: / Comfort that does not comprehend.