throbbing light machine

It's Edna St. Vincent Millay's birthday today. Reading her makes me remember why I do this is the first place - I've been feeling worn down of late, doubting the reasons for my work with literature, doubting that I'm doing anything useful at all, and I've had some pretty big academic disappointments in the past couple of days. But when I read Millay it all makes sense, and most of it stops mattering, because her poems are beautiful and that's really all the meaning I need. So happy birthday, Vincent, and thank you.

Witch-Wife

She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.

She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun 'tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of colored beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.

She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.