Seven Songs of Edna St. Vincent Millay

The railroad track is miles away,
  And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn't a train goes by all day
  But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn't a train goes by,
  Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
  And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with the friends I make,
  And better friends I'll not be knowing,
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take,
  No matter where it's going.

Oh come, my lad, or go, my lad,
And love me if you like.
I shall not hear the door shut
Or the knocker strike.

Oh bring me gifts or beg me gifts,
And wed me if you will.
I'd make a man a good wife,
Sensible and still.

And why should I be cold, my lad,
And why should you repine,
Because I love a dark head
That never will be mine.

I might as well be easing you
As lie alone in bed
And waste the night in wanting
A cruel dark head.

You might as well be calling yours
What never will be his,
And one of us be happy --
There's few enough as is.

The first rose on my rose tree
Budded, bloomed, and shattered
During sad days, when to me
Nothing mattered.
Grief of grief has drained me clean.
Still, it seems a pity
No one saw.  It must have been
Very pretty.

I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun,
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine
And then start down.

These wet rocks where the tide has been,
Barnacled white and weeded brown,
And slimed beneath to a beautiful green,
These wet rocks where the tide went down

Will show again when the tide is high,
Faint and perilous, far from shore,
No place to dream, but a place to die,
The bottom of the sea once more.

There was a child that wandered through
A giant's empty house all day.
House full of wonderful things and new --
But no fit place for a child to play.

 Butterflies are white and blue
 In this field we wander through.
 Suffer me to take your hand.
 Death comes in a day or two.

 All the things we ever knew
 Will be ashes in that hour.
 Mark the transient butterfly,
 How he hangs upon a flower.

 Suffer me to take your hand,
 Suffer me to cherish you
 Till the dawn is in the sky,
 Whether I be false or true.
 Death comes in a day or two.

I looked in my heart when the wild swans went over.
And what did I see I had not seen before?
Only a question less or a question more:
Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying.

Tiresome heart, forever living and dying,
House without air, I leave you and lock your door.
Wild swans, come over the town, come over
The town again, trailing your legs and crying!