Edna St. Vincent Millay, age 15. Not making any point, just enjoying her poetry

Old Letters

I know not why I am so loath to lay

Your yellow leaves along the glowing log,

Unburied dead, that cling about and clog —

With indisputable, insistent say

Of the stout past's all inefficient fray —

The striving present, rising like a fog

To rust the active in me, that am a cog

In the great wheel of industry today.

Yet, somehow, in this visible farewell

To the crude symbols of a simpler creed,

I find a pain that had not parallel

When passed the faith itself, — we give small heed

To incorporeal truth, let slack or swell;

But truth made tangible, is truth indeed.