Explore "Lines Written in Recapitulation" by Edna St. Vincent Millay on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I could not bring this splendid world nor any trading beast / In charge of it, to defer, no, not to give ear, not in the least
Appearance, to my handsome prophecies, which here I ponder and put by.
I am left simpler, less encumbered, by the consciousness that I / shall by no pebble in my dirty sling avail
To slay one purple giant four feet high and distribute arms / among his tall attendants, who spit at his name when spit-ting on the ground:
They will be found one day / Prone where they fell, or dead sitting-and a pockmarked wall
Supporting the beautiful back straight as an oak before it is old.
I have learned to fail. And I have had my say.
Yet shall I sing until my voice crack (this being my leisure, this my holiday)
That man was a special thing and no commodity, a thing improper to be sold.