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Sonnet VI. Bluebeard

by Edna St. Vincent Millay, 1917

This door you might not open, and you did;
  So enter now, and see for what slight thing
You are betrayed.... Here is no treasure hid,
  No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain
  For greed like yours, no writhings of distress,
But only what you see.... Look yet again—
  An empty room, cobwebbed and comfortless.
Yet this alone out of my life I kept
  Unto myself, lest any know me quite;
And you did so profane me when you crept
  Unto the threshold of this room to-night
That I must never more behold your face.
  This now is yours. I seek another place.

Published in Renascence, and Other Poems
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