Today’s poem is Conscientious Objector by Edna St. Vincent Millay, who was born in Rockland, Maine in 1892. She was one of the most popular writers of her time and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1923. She wrote this poem in 1934.
Conscientious Objector
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.
Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where
the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll.
I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me Shall you be overcome.
Edna St. Vincent Millay, Conscientious Objector
from Collected Poems. Copyright 1934, © 1962 by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Norma Millay Ellis.
Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Holly Peppe, Literary Executor, The Millay Society.
www.millay.org.