Millay’s “Chorus” reads like instructions spoken after a death. The speaker tells someone to give away a woman’s gowns and shoes because she no longer needs them, then lingers over their colors—“blue, green, blue, lilac, pink, blue”—as if remembering the body and life that filled them. The repeated commands are calm but heavy with grief. “She will dance no more” makes the loss explicit, and those “narrow shoes” suggest a particular person, small and young, who once moved in them. The mood is quiet and final, like the hush of emptying a closet after a death. There is tenderness in the attention to fragrance and fabric, but also a ritual sense of letting go. The poem doesn’t rage or console; it simply does the painful work of clearing a space where someone used to be.
Chorus — Summary
Give away her gowns, Give away her shoes; She has no more use For her fragrant gowns; Take them all down, Blue, green, blue, Lilac, pink, blue, From their padded hangers; She will dance no more In her narrow shoes; Sweep her narrow shoes From the closet floor.