therinde

This is by Edna St. Vincent Millay, who I think gets a bum rap: people seem to think they've "outgrown" her work and moved on to "more serious" poets, i.e. high Modernists. But check this out:

As men have loved their lovers in times past
And sung their wit, their virtue and their grace,
So have we loved sweet Justice to the last,
Who now lies here in an unseemly place.
The child will quit the cradle and grow wise
And stare on beauty till his senses drown;
Yet shall be seen no more by mortal eyes
Such beauty as here walked and here went down.
Like birds that hear the winter crying plain
Her courtiers leave to seek the clement south;
Many have praised her, we alone remain
To break a fist against the lying mouth
Of any man who says this was not so:
Though she be dead now, as indeed we know.

This is one of two sonnets Millay wrote in response to the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. I love the way it uses the traditions of love poetry in service of a political subject. And consider the gender dynamic, whereby the speaker positions themself and the reader as the masculine lover of feminine Justice.

I could go on all day about Millay, but this poem particularly has been on my mind lately.