by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)
Shall I be prisoner till my pulses stop
Language: English
Shall I be prisoner till my pulses stop To hateful Love and drag his noisy chain, And bait my need with sugared crusts that drop From jeweled fingers neither kind nor clean?— Mewed in an airless cavern where a toad Would grieve to snap his gnat and lay him down, While in the light along the rattling road Men shout and chaff and drive their wares to town?… Perfidious Prince, that keep me here confined, Doubt not I know the letters of my doom: How many a man has left his blood behind To buy his exit from this mournful room These evil stains record, these walls that rise Carved with his torment, steamy with his sighs.
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Text Authorship:
- by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950), no title, appears in Fatal Interview, first published 1931 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Ellis Bonoff Kohs (b. 1916), "Perfidious prince" [ low voice and piano ], from Fatal Interview [sung text not yet checked]
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website: 2021-10-10
Line count: 14
Word count: 117