Edna St. Vincent Millay

Renascence and Other Poems

The first rose on my rose-tree

Three Songs of Shattering

The first rose on my rose-tree
Budded, bloomed, and shattered,
During sad days when to me
Nothing mattered.

Grief of grief has drained me clean;
Still it seems a pity
No one saw, -- it must have been
Very pretty.