Above These Cares

Above these cares my spirit in calm abiding
Floats like a swimmer at sunrise, facing the pale sky;
Peaceful, heaved by the light infrequent lurch of the heavy wave serenely sliding
Under his weightless body, aware of the wide morning, aware of the gull on the red buoy bedaubed with guano, aware of his sharp cry;
Idly athirst for the sea, as who should say:
In a moment I will roll upon my mouth and drink it dry.

Painfully, under the pressure that obtains
At the sea's bottom, crushing my lungs and my brains
(For the body makes shift to breathe and after a fashion flourish
Ten fathoms deep in care,
Ten fathoms deep in an element denser than air
Wherein the soul must perish)
I trap and harvest, stilling my stomach's needs;
I crawl forever, hoping never to see
Above my head the limbs of my spirit no longer free
Kicking in frenzy, a swimmer enmeshed in weeds.

(From "Wine From These Grapes" 1934)


This is an excellent example of Millay's late work. Mature, quiet, full of metaphor but not overflowing, her poetry took a much more subtle, thoughtful turn in her later years. She had gained a great deal of experience, both in the literary world and her personal life. Many losses had touched her and she wrote a great deal about death throughout her lifetime, and the cumulative toll of these losses aged her. In 1934, at the age of 42, she was not writing love poems but poems about mankind. "Wine From These Grapes," the collection this poem comes from, also contains a set of sonnets called "Epitaph for the Race of Man," which addressed the human condition and broke from her tradition of writing mostly nature and love poetry.

"Above These Cares" paints a vivid picture of the spirit at peace even while the mind must be troubled with daily cares. The first few lines of this poem seem to evoke such a sense of complete and perfect peace. And the wish she ends with is one that I think most people make. That we may have within us a quiet calm even when we are forced to wrestle with our daily realities of stresses and demands. That we might feel that some part of ourselves is still floating "like a swimmer at sunrise" no matter our present circumstances.