Recuerdo

Recuerdo

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable—
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.

We were very tired, we were very merry—
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.

We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares.

From "A Few Figs From Thistles" 1922

This poem is one of Millay's more fun and (I like to think) summery pieces. It is about comraderie and travel and generosity and love. I wonder which ferries she was riding on - perhaps some of the same routes that travel now between Rockland and the islands of North Haven and Vinalhaven in Penobscot Bay.

Islands you travel to by ferry; apples and pears and subway fares and a beautiful sunrise - so many ways in which Maine and Washington are twins, sitting a country apart at similar latitudes.