(One of my) Favorites Poems

Renascence - Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950).

This poem touched me when turned 12 or 13. In my 7th grade literature class, we were required to memorize long poems and recite them during several classes. This poem (about spiritual re-birth) was very long, which was my first criterion. But as soon as I read the first stanzas, I was hooked. Yeah, I knew it wasn't masculine to like such stuff at that age and time, but this poem knocked me out.

The opening lines:

ALL I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked the other way,
And saw three islands in a bay.

So with my eyes I traced the line
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I’d started from;

And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood.
Over these things I could not see:
These were the things that bounded me;

And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all.

But, sure, the sky is big, I said;
Miles and miles above my head;
So here upon my back I’ll lie
And look my fill into the sky.

And so I looked, and, after all,
The sky was not so very tall.
The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,
And—sure enough!—I see the top!

The sky, I thought, is not so grand;
I ’most could touch it with my hand!
And reaching up my hand to try,
I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

(Knocked me out I tell ya'. And this was before I'd ever sampled any...erh...herbs.)

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