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Home / Classic Poets / Ashes of Life

Ashes of Life

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Flaming June" by Sir Frederic Leighton, 1895

click to enlarge

Love has gone and left me
and the days are all alike;
Eat I must, and sleep I will,—
and would that night were here!

But ah!—to lie awake
and hear the slow hours strike!
Would that it were day again!—
with twilight near!

Love has gone and left me
and I don’t know what to do;
This or that or what you will
is all the same to me;

But all the things that I begin
I leave before I’m through,—
There’s little use in anything
as far as I can see.

Love has gone and left me,—
and the neighbors knock and borrow,
And life goes on forever
like the gnawing of a mouse,—

And to-morrow and to-morrow
and to-morrow and to-morrow
There’s this little street
and this little house.

Selection from “Renascence, and Other Poems.” NEW YORK: HARPER, 1917 | Source: Project Gutenberg.
Painting: “Flaming June” by Sir Frederic Leighton, 1895.

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