Not With Libations, But With Shouts And Laughter

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Not with libations, but with shouts and laughter
We drenched the altars of Love’s sacred grove,
Shaking to earth green fruits, impatient after
The launching of the colored moths of Love.
Love’s proper myrtle and his mother’s zone
We bound about our irreligious brows,
And fettered him with garlands of our own,
And spread a banquet in his frugal house.
Not yet the god has spoken; but I fear
Though we should break our bodies in his flame,
And pour our blood upon his altar, here
Henceforward is a grove without a name,
A pasture to the shaggy goats of Pan,
Whence flee forever a woman and a man.

Next 10 Poems

• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Ode To Silence
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Oh, My Beloved, Have You Thought Of This
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Once More Into My Arid Days Like Dew
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Only Until This Cigarette Is Ended
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Passer Mortuus Est
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Pastoral
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Portrait By A Neighbor
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Prayer To Persephone
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Recuerdo
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Renascence

Previous 10 Poems

• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Not In This Chamber Only At My Birth
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : No Rose That In A Garden Ever Grew
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Mindful Of You The Sodden Earth In Spring
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Midnight Oil
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Memorial To D. C.
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Mariposa
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Macdougal Street
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Low-tide
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Let You Not Say Of Me When I Am Old
• Edna St. Vincent Millay : Lament