The rainbows all lie crumpled on these hills,
The red dawns scattered on their colored sills.
These hills have caught the lightning in its flight,
Caught colors from the skies of day and night
And shine with shattered stars and suns; they hold
Dyed yellow, red and purple, blue and gold.
Red roses seem within their marble blown,
A painted garden chiseled in the stone;
The rose and violet trickling through their veins,
Where they drop brilliant curtains to the plains—
A ramp of rock and granite, jeweled and brightening,
Like some great colored wall of lightning!
_Edna St. Vincent Millay_
Edna St. Vincent Millay, possibly the most gifted of the younger
lyricists, was born February 22, 1892, at Rockland, Maine. After a
childhood spent almost entirely in New England, she attended Vassar
College, from which she was graduated in 1917. Since that time she
has lived in New York City. Besides her keenly individual lyrics,
Miss Millay has written a quantity of short stories under various
pseudonyms, has translated several songs, and has been connected
with the Provincetown Players both as playwright and performer.
Although the bulk of her poetry is not large, the quality of it
approaches and sometimes attains greatness. Her first long poem,
“Renascence,” was the outstanding feature of _The Lyric Year_
(1912), an anthology which revealed many new names. “Renascence” was
written when Miss Millay was scarcely nineteen; it remains today one
of the most remarkable poems of this generation. Beginning like a
child’s aimless verse it proceeds, with a calm lucidity, to an
amazing climax. It is as if a child had, in the midst of its
ingenuousness, uttered some terrific truth. The sheer cumulative
power of this poem is surpassed only by its beauty.
_Renascence_, the name of Miss Millay’s first volume, was published
in 1917. It is full of the same passion as its title-poem; here is a
hunger for beauty so intense that no delight is great enough to give
the soul peace. Such poems as “God’s World” and the unnamed sonnets
vibrate with this rapture. Magic burns from the simplest of her
lines. _Figs from Thistles_ (1920) is a far more sophisticated
booklet. Sharp and cynically brilliant, Miss Millay’s craftsmanship
no less than her intuition saves these poems from mere cleverness.
_Second April_ (1921) is an intensification of her lyrical gift
tinctured with an increasing sadness and disillusion. Her poignant
poetic play, _Aria da Capo_, first performed by the Provincetown
Players in New York, was published in _The Monthly Chapbook_ (Harold
Monro, England); the issue of July, 1920, being devoted to it.