Mystical Magic on a Mountaintop
by Elayne Clift

“All I could see from where I stood,
Was three long mountains and a wood,”
She wrote. The opening lines of an epic poem
I happened upon as a youth, invited me to
Share a spiritual journey with the poet,
Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Just 19 years old when she embarked on her journey,
“Renascence” explored life, death, rebirth, morality,
And the universal search for meaning.
How did she do it? She began by lying in the grass,
Looking at the sky, and the words began to flow.
“I screamed and – lo – infinity came down and
Settled over me.” And an epiphany led her to God.

She discovered the world’s “immensity made manifold,”
As it “whispered the ticking of Eternity,” and knew
“At last, the How and Why of all things, past,
And present, and forever more.”
Who among us has such an experience
That changes us and asks that we “contemplate
Our sins and shortcomings?”

I loved the poem’s call for empathy, and contemplation,
And longed for a great awakening so that I too could share
such eloquence, as I struggled to experience “the breathless hush”
and “far-off rush of heralded wings” that “came whispering, like music …”
Oh, to write words like those and have “a sense of glad awakening.”
That “breath[es] my soul back into me!” and to know that “the world stands out
on either side. No wider than the heart is wide;” and to know “the soul
Can split the sky … and let the face of God shine through!”



 

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