'Bluebeard' by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Poetry

Bluebeard

*Sonnet VI from Renascence and Other Poems* by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1917)**

This door you might not open, and you did; So enter now, and see for what slight thing You are betrayed…. Here is no treasure hid, No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain For greed like yours, no writhings of distress, But only what you see…. Look yet again— An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless. Yet this alone out of my life I kept Unto myself, lest any know me quite; And you did so profane me when you crept Unto the threshold of this room to-night That I must never more behold your face. This now is yours. I seek another place.

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