Edna St. Vincent Millay

HO, Giant! This is I!

I have built me a bean-stalk into your sky!

La—but it’s lovely, up so high!

This is how I came—I put

There my knee, here my foot,

Up and up, from shoot to shoot;

And the blessed bean-stalk thinning

Like the mischief all the time,

Till it took me rocking, spinning,

In a dizzy, sunny circle,

Making angles with the root,

Far and out above the cackle

Of the city I was born in;

Till the little dirty city,

In the light so sheer and sunny,

Shone as dazzling bright and pretty

As the money that you find

In a dream of finding money—

What a wind! what a morning!—

Till the tiny, shiny city,

When I shot a glance below

Shaken with a giddy laughter

Sick and blissfully afraid,

Was a dew-drop on a blade,

And a pair of moments after

Was the whirling guess I made;

And the wind was like a whip

Cracking past my icy ears,

And my hair stood out behind,

And my eyes were full of tears,

Wide-open and cold,

More tears than they could hold;

The wind was blowing so,

And my teeth were in a row,

Dry and grinning,

And I felt my foot slip,

And I scratched the wind and whined,

And I clutched the stalk and jabbered

With my eyes shut blind—

What a wind: what a wind!

Your broad sky, Giant,

Is the shelf of a cupboard.

I make bean-stalks—I’m

A builder like yourself;

But bean-stalks is my trade—

I couldn’t make a shelf,

Don’t know how they’re made.

Now, a bean-stalk is more pliant—

La, what a climb!

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