3.5: Millay, "An Ancient Gesture"

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An Ancient Gesture

Millay, Edna St. Vincent (1892 - 1950)

Original Text: Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Mine the Harvest. 1954.

I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:

Penelope did this too.

And more than once: you can’t keep weaving all day

And undoing it all through the night;

Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;

And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,

And your husband has been gone, and you don’t know where, for years,

Suddenly you burst into tears;

There is simply nothing else to do.

And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:

This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,

In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;

Ulysses did this too.

But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied

To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.

He learned it from Penelope …

Penelope, who really cried.

Publication Start Year 1949

Publication Notes The Ladies’ Home Journal. vol. 66 (1949).

RPO poem Editors

Marc R Plamondon

RPO Edition 2018

Representative Poetry Online

Source: https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/content/ancient-gesture