The Harp-Weaver/The Dragonfly

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For other versions of this work, see The Dragonfly (Millay).
2873697The Harp-Weaver — The Dragonfly1923Edna St. Vincent Millay


THE DRAGONFLY

I wound myself in a white cocoon of singing,
All day long in the brook’s uneven bed,
Measuring out my soul in a mucous thread;
Dimly now to the brook’s green bottom clinging,
Men behold me, a worm spun-out and dead,
Walled in an iron house of silky singing.

Nevertheless at length, O reedy shallows,
Not as a plodding nose to the slimy stem,
But as a brazen wing with a spangled hem,
Over the jewel-weed and the pink marshmallows,
Free of these and making a song of them,
I shall arise, and a song of the reedy shallows!