Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950). Renascence and Other Poems. 1917.

21. “Not in this chamber only at my birth”

Sonnet IV

NOT in this chamber only at my birth—

When the long hours of that mysterious night

Were over, and the morning was in sight—

I cried, but in strange places, steppe and firth

I have not seen, through alien grief and mirth;

And never shall one room contain me quite

Who in so many rooms first saw the light,

Child of all mothers, native of the earth.

So is no warmth for me at any fire

To-day, when the world’s fire has burned so low;

I kneel, spending my breath in vain desire,

At that cold hearth which one time roared so strong,

And straighten back in weariness, and long

To gather up my little gods and go.