The Dragon-Fly
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
The Dragon-Fly was first published in Vanity Fair in February, 1922.

I wound myself in a white cocoon of singing, All day long in the brook's uneven bed, Measuring out my soul in a mucous thread; Dimly now to the brook's green bottom clinging, Men behold me, a worm spun-out and dead, Walled in an iron house of silky singing. Nevertheless at length, O reedy shallows, Not as a plodding nose to the slimy stem, But as a brazen wing with a spangled hem, Over the jewel-weed and the pink marsh-mallows, Free of these and making a song of them, I shall arise, and a song of the reedy shallows!
Crowd Score: 8.0
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