by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950)
And you as well must die, beloved dust
Language: English
And you as well must die, beloved dust, And all your beauty stand you in no stead; This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head, This body of flame and steel, before the gust Of Death, or under his autumnal frost, Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead Than the first leaf that fell,--this wonder fled. Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost. Nor shall my love avail you in your hour. In spite of all my love, you will arise Upon that day and wander down the air Obscurely as the unattended flower, It mattering not how beautiful you were, Or how beloved above all else that dies.
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Text Authorship:
- by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 - 1950), no title, appears in Second April, first published 1921 [author's text checked 1 time against a primary source]
Musical settings (art songs, Lieder, mélodies, (etc.), choral pieces, and other vocal works set to this text), listed by composer (not necessarily exhaustive):
- by Alva Henderson (b. 1940), "And you as well must die...", 1994, from Love is not all... , no. 3 [sung text checked 1 time]
- by Jay Poûhe (b. 1935), "And you as well must die, beloved dust", published 1971 [ medium voice and piano ], from The Amorous Line, no. 6 [sung text not yet checked]
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
This text was added to the website: 2004-06-04
Line count: 14
Word count: 107