… is (who knew?) the house and garden and gravesite of Edna Saint Vincent Millay. It’s now open to the public, and UD, who will be in New York for most of August, will visit. And write about it here, on University Diaries.
As a kind of counterpoint to the terrible theme, lately, of university student suicides, there’s the following Millay poem.
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O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
Thy mists that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To crush! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, World, I cannot get thee close enough!
Long have I known a glory in it all,
But never knew I this;
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart. Lord, I do fear
Thou’st made the world too beautiful this year.
My soul is all but out of me, let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.
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Too much beauty. Must be the hills of upstate she’s looking at, height of autumn. The passion the too-candescent world makes her feel stretches her apart; she’s about to burst. Her soul is all but out of her.
She asks God to knock it off – no more orange leaves, no more birdsongs – or she’ll perish of bliss.