Consider today the thoughtful words of this sonnet by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950):
Read history: so learn your place in Time
And go to sleep: all this was done before;
We do it better, fouling every shore;
We disinfect, we do not probe, the crime.
Our engines plunge into the seas, they climb
Above our atmosphere: we grow not more
Profound as we approach the ocean's floor;
Our flight is lofty, it is not sublime.
Yet long ago this Earth by struggling men
Was scuffed, was scraped by mouths that bubbled mud;
And will be so again, and yet again;
Until we trace our poison to its bud
And root, and there uproot it: until then,
Earth will be warmed each winter by man's blood.
These lines are found on my shelf in Collected Sonnets (Revised and Expanded Edition) by Edna St. Vincent Millay (Harper & Row, 1988). AND, recall the arithmetic of a sonnet: 14 lines (or breaths) and 5 iambs (or heartbeats) per line.
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