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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay was born in Rockland, Maine,...
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FURTHER READING
Poems about Oceans
A Book Of Music
by Jack Spicer
By the Waters of Babylon [V. Currents]
by Emma Lazarus
Half Mile Down
by Michael Ryan
harbor (the conversion)
by Nick Flynn
Our Valley
by Philip Levine
Out of the Rolling Ocean, the Crowd
by Walt Whitman
Sea Fever
by John Masefield
The Ocean
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Paltry Nude Starts on a Spring Voyage
by Wallace Stevens
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Inland

 
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

People that build their houses inland,
   People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
   Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
   Tons of water striking the shore,—
What do they long for, as I long for
   One salt smell of the sea once more?

People the waves have not awakened,
   Spanking the boats at the harbour's head,
What do they long for, as I long for,—
   Starting up in my inland bed,

Beating the narrow walls, and finding
   Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death by drowning,—
   One salt taste of the sea once more?






This poem appeared in Poem-A-Day on June 8, 2013. Browse the Poem-A-Day archive.
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