Four Sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I

Love, though for this you riddle me with darts, / And drag me at your chariot till I die, -- / Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts! -- / Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lie / Who shout you mighty: thick about my hair / Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr / Who still am free, unto no querulous care / A fool, and in no temple worshiper! / I, that have bared me to your quiver's fire, / Lifted my face into its puny rain, / Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire / As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain! / (Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave, / Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave! )

II

I think I should have loved you presently, / And given in earnest words I flung in jest; / And lifted honest eyes for you to see, / And caught your hand against my cheek and breast; / And all my pretty follies flung aside / That won you to me, and beneath your gaze, / Naked of reticence and shorn of pride, / Spread like a chart my little wicked ways.

I, that had been to you, had you remained, / But one more waking from a recurrent dream, / Cherish no less the certain stakes I gained, / And walk your memory's halls, austere, supreme, / A ghost in marble of a girl you knew / Who would have loved you in a day or two.

III

Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow! / Faithless am I save to love's self alone.

Were you not lovely I would leave you now; / After the feet of beauty fly my own.

Were you not still my hunger's rarest food, / And water ever to my wildest thirst, / I would desert you -- think not but I would! -- / And seek another as I sought you first.

But you are mobile as the veering air, / And all your charms more changeful than the tide, / Wherefore to be inconstant is no care: / I have but to continue at your side.

So wanton, light and false, my love, are you, / I am most faithless when I most am true.

IV

I shall forget you presently, my dear, / So make the most of this, your little day, / Your little month, your little half a year, / Ere I forget, or die, or move away, / And we are done forever; by and by / I shall forget you, as I said, but now, / If you entreat me with your loveliest lie / I will protest you with my favorite vow.

I would indeed that love were longer-lived, / And oaths were not so brittle as they are, / But so it is, and nature has contrived / To struggle on without a break thus far, -- / Whether or not we find what we are seeking / Is idle, biologically speaking.