68. An Elegy from Edna St. Vincent Millay

In memory of the students who died recently at Blacksburg, Virginia, and all those young men and women who've died in the war in Iraq and elsewhere, and because it National Poetry Month (and I haven't posted any poems yet), I offer this poem of Edna St. Vincent Millay:

From "Memorial to D.C. (Vassar College, 1918)"

O, loveliest throat of all sweet throats,
Where now no more the music is,
With hands that wrote you little notes
I write you little elegies!

V --Elegy

Let them bury your big eyes
In the secret earth securely,
Your thin fingers, and your fair,
Soft, indefinite-colored hair--
All of these in some way, surely,
From the secret earth shall rise;
Not for these I sit and stare,
Broken and bereft completely:
Your young flesh that sat so neatly
On your little bones will sweetly
Blossom in the air.

But your voice...never the rushing
Of a river underground,
Not the rising of the wind
In the trees before the rain,
Not the woodcock's watery call,
Not the note the white-throat utters,
Not the feet of children pushing
Yellow leaves along the gutters
In the blue and bitter fall,
Shall content my musing mind
For the beauty of that sound
That in no new way at all
Ever will be heard again.

Sweetly through the sappy stalk
Of the vigorous weed,
Holding all it held before,
Cherished by the faithful sun,
On and on eternally
Shall your altered fluid run,
Bud and bloom and go to seed:
But your singing days are done;
And the music of your talk
Never shall the chemistry
Of the secret earth restore.

All your lovely words are spoken.
Once the ivory box is broken,
Beats the golden bird no more.