Staying on the subject of the poems that open each book, I'll take Homecoming and The Lost together, as they're both poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Homecoming is opened by a very short one that became something of an anthem for the Jazz Age after its publication in 1920, expressing the sentiments of the Lost Generation.

My candle burns at both ends. It will not last the night.
But oh my foes and oh my friends! It makes a lovely light!

My coauthor, Amy Griswold, chose the one for The Lost. I've bolded the lines that open The Lost.

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.
Crowned with lilies and with laurel they go: but I am not resigned.

Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains - but the best is lost.

The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,-
They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled
Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.
More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Both of these are for John Sheppard.



One of the things we see early in season one of Stargate Atlantis is that John Sheppard does not intend to live long. From day one he's willing to die. No, resigned to die, which is more interesting. Why? Why is he burning the candle at both ends, putting everything into a brief and amazing push? In The Storm and The Eye he's so bright and so doomed. What's happened to get him to this point? We don't really get much of a clue until season three's Phantoms. This is about the people he has failed, about the friends he's lost. He's living on borrowed time.

That's one of the main plot arcs of the Legacy series -- John as marked man, and how he will either meet his fate or bypass it forever. And so Homecoming opens with John, that bright flame burning more dimly than it did in season one, but still prepared to lose it all and do so willingly.

In The Lost, things have moved a bit. He is not resigned. Nor is Ronon, who is the one who literally descends to the grave in The Lost, and who is decidedly not willing to surrender. Yes, there is loss. There is overwhelming loss. But he's also no longer willing to just fight until he dies. There ought to be something beyond. He can't see what it is yet, but surely there is something beyond, something better than taking Todd out in a suicide attack.

The Lost is about coming back to life -- John's process, Ronon's process, and the literal return of The Avenger, the Ancient warship that comes to life under John's hands, waking like Sleeping Beauty.

Sometimes the things you think are dead are only sleeping.