Edna St. Vincent Millay
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.Collection: Pay
I am waylaid by beauty.Collection: Beauty
Oh, you mean I'm a homosexual! Of course I am, and heterosexual too, but what's that got to do with my headache?Collection: Mean
I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.Collection: Relationship
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.Collection: Life
Stranger, pause and look; From the dust of ages Lift this little book, Turn the tattered pages, Read me, do not let me die! Search the fading letters finding Steadfast in the broken binding All that once was I!Collection: Book
Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost, but climb.Collection: Lost
Night falls fast. Today is in the past.Collection: Fall
SHE is neither pink nor pale, And she never will be all mine; She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, And her mouth on a valentine. She has more hair than she needs; In the sun ’tis a woe to me! And her voice is a string of colored beads, Or steps leading into the sea. She loves me all that she can, And her ways to my ways resign; But she was not made for any man, And she never will be all mine.Collection: Valentine
pity me that the heart is slow to learn what the swift mind beholds at every turn.Collection: Learning
And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with you all through my life?-sharing my fire, my bed, Sharing-oh, worst of all things!-the same head?- And, when I feed myself, feeding you too?Collection: Life
I, being born a woman and distressed By all the needs and notions of my kind, Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair, and feel a certain zest To bear your body's weight upon my breast; So subtly is the fume of life designed, To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind, And leave me once again undone, possessed. Think not for this, however, the poor treason Of my stout blood against my staggering brain, I shall remember you with love, or season My scorn with pity, - let me make it plain: I find this frenzy insufficient reason For conversation when we meet again.Collection: Thinking
And all the loveliest things there be come simply, so it seems to me.Collection: Simplicity
But you, you foolish girl, you have gone home to a leaky castle across the sea to lie awake in linen smelling of lavender, and hear the nightingale, and long for me.Collection: Girl
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I And hailed the earth with such a cry As is not heard save from a man Who has been dead, and lives again. About the trees my arms I wound; Like one gone mad I hugged the ground; I raised my quivering arms on high; I laughed and laughed into the sky.Collection: Men
Euclid alone Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.Collection: Stones
Catch from the board of beauty/ Such careless crumbs as fall.Collection: Fall
Guess I'll weep awhile. Guess I won't, I mean.Collection: Mean
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree, Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one, Yet knows its boughs more silent than beforeCollection: Lonely
Love is not all; it is not meat nor drink.Collection: Love Is
It's little I know what's in my heart,What's in my mind it's little I know,But there's that in me must up and start,And it's little I care where my feet go.Collection: Heart
Under my head till morning; but the rain, Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh, Upon the glass and listen for reply.Collection: Morning
Sweet love, sweet thorn, when lightly to my heart. I took your thrust, whereby I since am slain, And I lie disheveled in the grass apart, A sodden thing bedrenched by tears and rain.Collection: Breakup
But she was not made for any man, and she will never be all mine.Collection: Men
The only people I really hate are servants. They're not really human beings at all.Collection: Hate
If ever I said in grief or pride, I'd tired of honest things, I lied.Collection: Truth
Progress-progress is the dirtiest word in the language-who ever told us- And made us believe it-that to take a step forward was necessarily, was always A good idea?Collection: Believe
To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died, who neither listen nor speak.Collection: People
Time can make soft that iron wood.Collection: Time
Life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse.Collection: Life
How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers The buck in the snow . . . Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.Collection: Life
I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.Collection: Heart
Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare. Let all who prate of Beauty hold their peace, And lay them prone upon the earth and cease To ponder on themselves, the while they stare At nothing, intricately drawn nowhere In shapes of shifting lineage; let geese Gabble and hiss, but heroes seek release From dusty bondage into luminous air. O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day, When first the shaft into his vision shone Of light anatomized! Euclid alone Has looked on Beauty bare. Fortunate they Who, though once only and then but far away, Have heard her massive sandal set on stone.Collection: Peace
I only know that summer sang in me A little while, that in me sings no more.Collection: Summer
Martyred many times must be Who would keep his country free.Collection: Country
Evil alone has oil for every wheel.Collection: Oil
The heart grows weary after a little Of what it loved for a little while.Collection: Heart
I make bean stalks, I'm A builder, like yourself.Collection: Work
Need we say it was not love, Now that love is perished?Collection: Love
But far, oh, far as passionate eye can reach, And long, ah, long as rapturous eye can cling, The world is mine: blue hill, still silver lake, Broad field, bright flower, and the long white road A gateless garden, and an open path: My feet to follow, and my heart to hold.Collection: Flower
A Poem from Edna St. Vincent Millay: Grown-up Was it for this I uttered prayers, And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs, That now, domestic as a plate, I should retire at half-past eight?Collection: Prayer
Lord, I do fear Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year My soul is all but out of me-let fall No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.Collection: Beautiful
But you were something more than young and sweet And fair, - and the long year remembers you.Collection: Sweet