Bluebeard Poetry

Bluebeard
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
(1892 - 1950)

IV

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.

From Renascence and Other Poems (1917)

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American poet, playwright, and feminist. She received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1923 for The Harp Weaver and Other Poems.