“Vassar Days”

Lyrics

I’ll take the field and the forest
I’ll take the sound
Of the sky to one ear
One ear to the ground

Springtime all hands
Reach to the sun
I will touch one hundred flowers
And not pick one

I will be the air
If you’ll be the seed
I will carry you
If you will go where I lead

Summer wind carries us down these halls
Faster than we can run
I will knock at one hundred doors
And not enter one

If I escape will you
Run after me?
If I come back to you tonight
Will you turn away from me?

We make our bed in these autumn leaves
Night sky above
I will light one hundred fires
I will give myself to love

(Alright)

I am most constant when I
When I am least true
But the miles stretch between us
It doesn’t hurt like it used to

We lie as seeds between the winter snow
And the stone
I will touch one hundred women
And still feel alone

Copyright © 2010 Karl Ward

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“Vassar Days” tells a tiny bit of the story of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s life at Vassar College. The song is track 4 from No Clothes on Ragged Island, the Ghost Ghost album I co-wrote in a single day with Kevin Peckham. Of the five songs I contributed to the album, it was either the first or second song I wrote that day. There are references to Millay’s wonderful poem “Renascence,” which was one of her first published pieces, as well as her famous sonnet “Oh, think not I am faithful to a vow.”