Inland

1892 –

1950

People that build their houses inland,
   People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
   Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
   Tons of water striking the shore,—
What do they long for, as I long for
   One salt smell of the sea once more?

People the waves have not awakened,
   Spanking the boats at the harbour's head,
What do they long for, as I long for,—
   Starting up in my inland bed,

Beating the narrow walls, and finding
   Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death by drowning,—
   One salt taste of the sea once more?

This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on June 8, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.

Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX)

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 
And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 
Yet many a man is making friends with death 
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 
It well may be that in a difficult hour, 
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 
Or nagged by want past resolution’s power, 
I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 
Or trade the memory of this night for food.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

1931

[Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find]

Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find
The roots of last year’s roses in my breast;
I am as surely riper in my mind
As if the fruit stood in the stalls confessed.
Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will,
Call me in all things what I was before,
A flutterer in the wind, a woman still;

Edna St. Vincent Millay

1922

Sonnet III: “Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring”

Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring,
And all the flowers that in the springtime grow,
And dusty roads, and thistles, and the slow
Rising of the round moon, all throats that sing
The summer through, and each departing wing,
And all the nests that the bared branches show,
And all winds that in any weather blow,

Edna St. Vincent Millay

1917

Poems

Inland

More by this poet

Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX)

[Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find]

Sonnet III: “Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring”

Poems

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Inland

More by this poet

Love is Not All (Sonnet XXX)

[Say what you will, and scratch my heart to find]

Sonnet III: “Mindful of you the sodden earth in spring”

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