Afternoon in my backyard, as Edna St. Vincent Millay described it

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Afternoon in my backyard, as Edna St. Vincent Millay described it

Currently Reading
The Selected Poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay: Renascence And Other Poems, a Few Figs from Thistles, Second April, And the Ballad of the Harp-weaver
By Edna St. Vincent Millay
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...I know not how such things can be;
I only know there came to me
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save living happy things;
A sound as of some joyous elf
Singing sweet songs to please himself [read 'Teddy']
And, through and over everything,
A sense of glad awakening.
The grass, a tip-toe at my ear,
Whispering to me I could hear;
I felt the rain's cool fingertips
Brushed tenderly across my lips,
Laid gently on my sealed sight,
And all at once the heavy night
Fell from my eyes and I could see!--
A drenched and dripping apple tree,
A last long line of silver rain,
A sky grown clear and blue again.
And as I looked a quickening gust
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard breath, and with the smell,--
I know not how such things can be!--
I breathed my soul back into me.

-From Renascence, Edna St. Vincent Millay