Ashes of Life 

 

1    Love has gone and left me and the days are all alike;

2    Eat I must, and sleep I will, -- and would that night were here!

3     But ah! -- to lie awake and hear the slow hours strike!

4    Would that it were day again! -- with twilight near!

5    Love has gone and left me and I don't know what to do;

6    This or that or what you will is all the same to me;

7    But all the things that I begin I leave before I'm through, --

8    There's little use in anything as far as I can see.

9    Love has gone and left me, -- and the neighbors knock and borrow,

10  And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse, --

11  And to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow

12  There's this little street and this little house.

 

 

Millay, Edna St. Vincent (1892 - 1950)

 

Original Text: 

Edna St. Vincent Millay, Renascence and Other Poems (New York and London: Harper, 1917): 46-47. 15th edn. PS 3525 I495R4 Robarts Library.

 http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/ashes-life