Poetry Friday: Pixie Poetry
May 25th, 2007 at 1:38 pm (Books, Poetry Friday)
Today I wanted to share an interesting poem from Edna St. Vincent Millay about a pixie-child of two strangely paired parents. It’s images intrigued me and I just found it too interesting not to include in a Poetry Friday post!
The Singing Woman from the Woods Edge
What should I be but a prophet and a liar,
Whose mother was a leprechaun, whose father was a friar?
Teethed on a crucifix and cradled under water,
What should I be but a fiend’s god-daughter?
And who should be my playmates but the adder and the frog,
That was got beneath a furze-bush and born in a bog?
And what should be my singing, that was christened at an altar,
But Aves and Credos and Psalms out of the Psalter?
You will see such webs on the wet grass, maybe,
As a pixie-mother weaves for her baby,
You will find such flame at the wave’s weedy ebb
As flashes in the meshes of a mer-mother’s web,
But there comes to birth no common spawn
From the love of a priest for a leprechaun,
And you never have seen and you never will see
Such things as the things that swaddled me!
After all’s said and after all’s done,
What should I be but a harlot and a nun?
In through the bushes, on any foggy day,
My Da would come a-swishing of the drops away,
With a prayer for my death and a groan for my birth,
A-mumbling of his beads for all that he was worth.
And there’d sit my Ma, with her knees beneath her chin,
A-looking in his face and a-drinking of it in,
And a-marking in the moss some funny little saying
That would mean just the opposite of all that he was praying!
He taught me the holy-talk of Vesper and of Matin,
He heard me my Greek and he heard me my Latin,
He blessed me and crossed me to keep my soul from evil,
And we watched him out of sight, and we conjured up the devil!
Oh, the things I haven’t seen and the things I haven’t known,
What with hedges and ditches till after I was grown,
And yanked both way by my mother and my father,
With a “which would you better? and a “which would you rather?”
With him for a sire and her for a dam,
What should I be but just what I am?
I hope you found the poem as interesting as I did! The round-up is at a wrung sponge today, so head over there and check it out!
:: Suzanne :: said,
May 26, 2007 at 12:51 am
I love her poems but had someone missed this one. Thank you so much for sharing it.
Hipwritermama said,
May 26, 2007 at 6:39 am
This is wonderful!
jone said,
May 29, 2007 at 10:28 pm
I don’t know if you participate in memes–but I’m tagging you just in case. You can check out the directions at “Check It Out”.