When the Year Grows Old

Here is an offering from my new book of poems by 

Edna St. Vincent Millay:

When the Year Grows Old

I cannot help remember

When the year grows old --

October -- November --

How she disliked the cold!

She used to watch the swallows

Go down across the sky,

And turn from the window

With a little sharp sigh.

And often when the brown leaves

Were brittle on the ground

And the wind in the chimney

Made a melancholy sound,

She had a look about her

That I wish I could forget --

The look of a scared thing

Sitting in a net!

Oh, beautiful at nightfall

The soft spitting snow!

And beautiful the bare boughs

Rubbing to and fro!

But the roaring of the fire,

And the warmth of the fur,

And the boiling of the kettle

Were beautiful to her!

I cannot but remember

When the year grows old --

October -- November --

How she disliked the cold!