WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
Poems cover

Poems

Chapter 100: Wild Swans
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

American LiteraturePoetry

About This Book

This collection gathers lyrical poems that move between expansive meditations and concentrated sonnets, exploring awe, longing, and the burdens of compassion. Recurring subjects include nature, seasonal change, mortality, and desire, with vivid images of orchards, sea, and city life anchoring philosophical reflection. The volume alternates long narrative-lyric pieces with brief, tightly crafted songs and sonnets, shifting from exuberant, declarative lines to quiet elegiac tones. Organized in sections that vary in mood and form, the work emphasizes emotional immediacy, formal variety, and an attentive speaker negotiating self, other, and the natural world.

Wild Swans

I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over.
 And what did I see I had not seen before?
 Only a question less or a question more;
 Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.
 Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,
 House without air, I leave you and lock your door.
 Wild swans, come over the town, come over
 The town again, trailing your legs and crying!

Printed in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.

Works by
D. H. Lawrence

❧

The Lost Girl, 9s.
Women in Love, 9s.
Aaron’s Rod, 7s. 6d.
The Ladybird, 7s. 6d.
Kangaroo, 7s. 6d.
New Poems, 5s.
Birds, Beasts and Flowers, 6s.
Sea and Sardinia, 21s.

Works by
Compton Mackenzie

❧

The Passionate Elopement, 7s. 6d.
Carnival, 7s. 6d.
Sinister Street, Vol. I, 7s. 6d.
Sinister Street, Vol. II, 7s. 6d.
Guy and Pauline, 7s. 6d.
Sylvia Scarlett, 8s.
Sylvia and Michael, 8s.
Poor Relations, 7s. 6d.
Rich Relatives, 9s.
The Seven Ages of Woman, 7s. 6d.
Kensington Rhymes, 5s.

Works by
Maurice Baring

❧

Dead Letters, 6s.
Diminutive Dramas, 5s.
Poems: 1914–1919, 6s.
Passing By, 7s. 6d.

Works by
Norman Douglas

❧

South Wind, 7s. 6d.
Old Calabria, 10s. 6d.
Fountains in the Sand, 6s.
Siren Land, 7s. 6d.

Works by
Arthur Machen

❧

The Hill of Dreams, 7s. 6d.
The Secret Glory, 7s. 6d.
Far Off Things, 7s. 6d.
Things Near and Far, 7s. 6d.
Hieroglyphics, 7s. 6d.
The Caerleon Edition, £9 9s.

Works by
Lascelles Abercrombie

❧

Four Short Plays, 6s.
Towards a Theory of Art, 5s.
Principles of English Prosody, 5s.
The Epic: An Essay, 5s.
Speculative Dialogues, 5s.
Thomas Hardy: A Critical Study, 3s. 6d.

Martin Secker