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Edna St. Vincent Millay

  • The soul can split the sky in two, / And let the face of God shine through.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • title poem, Renascence ()
  • For rain it hath a friendly sound / To one who's six feet under ground; / And scarce the friendly voice or face, / A grave is such a quiet place.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • title poem, Renascence ()
  • And, through and over everything, / A sense of glad awakening.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • title poem, Renascence ()
  • God, I can push the grass apart / And lay my finger on Thy heart!

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • title poem, Renascence ()
  • The world stands out on either side. / No wider than the heart is wide; / Above the world is stretched the sky / No higher than the soul is high.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • title poem, Renascence ()
  • Not truth, but faith, it is that keeps the world alive.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • ti"Interim," Renascence ()
  • O World, I cannot hold thee close enough!

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "God's World," Renascence ()
  • And life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse ...

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Ashes of Life," Renascence ()
  • I love humanity but I hate people.

  • My candle burns at both ends; / It will not last the night; / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends — / It gives a lovely light!

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "First Fig," A Few Figs From Thistles ()
  • Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: / Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Second Fig," A Few Figs From Thistles ()
  • The fabric of my faithful love / No power shall dim or ravel / Whilst I stay here, — but oh, my dear, / If I should ever travel!

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "To the Not Impossible Him," A Few Figs From Thistles ()
  • With him for a sire and her for a dam, / What should I be but just what I am?

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "The Singing-Woman From the Wood's Edge," A Few Figs From Thistles ()
  • I had a little Sorrow, / Born of a little Sin.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "The Penitent," A Few Figs From Thistles ()
  • Down you mongrel, Death! / Back into your kennel!

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "The Poet and His Book," Second April ()
  • I am waylaid by beauty.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Assault," Second April ()
  • ... I know that Beauty must ail and die, / And will be born again, — but ah, to see / Beauty stiffened, staring up at the sky! / Oh, Autumn! Autumn! — What is the Spring to me?

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "The Death of Autumn," Second April ()
  • Life is a quest and love a quarrel ...

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Weeds," Second April ()
  • Life in itself / Is nothing, / An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Spring," Second April ()
  • April / Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Spring," Second April ()
  • Life must go on; / I forget just why.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Lament," Second April ()
  • All your lovely words are spoken. / Once the ivory box is broken, / Beats the golden bird no more.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Memorial to D.C.," Second April ()
  • Birds that cannot even sing — / Dare to come again in spring!

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Doubt No More That Oberon," Second April ()
  • My heart is warm with the friends I make, / And better friends I'll not be knowing; / Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take, / No matter where it's going.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Travel," Second April ()
  • Heap not on this mound / Roses that she loved so well; / Why bewilder her with roses, / That she cannot see or smell?

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Epitaph," Second April ()
  • After all, my erstwhile dear, / My no longer cherished, / Need we say it was not love, / Just because it perished?

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Passer Mortuus Est," Second April ()
  • I know I am but summer to your heart, / And not the full four seasons of the year ...

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "I Know I Am But Summer," The Harp-Weaver ()
  • And all the loveliest things there be come simply, so it seems to me.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "The Goose-Girl," The Harp-Weaver ()
  • This have I known always: Love is no more / Than the wide blossom which the wind assails, / Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore, / Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales: / Pity me that the heart is slow to learn / What the swift mind beholds at every turn.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Pity Me Not," The Harp-Weaver ()
  • I cannot say what loves have come and gone, / I only know that summer sang in me / A little while, that in me sings no more.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "What Lips My Lips Have Kissed, and Where, and Why," The Harp-Weaver ()
  • 'Tis not love's going hurts my days, / But that it went in little ways.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "The Spring and the Fall," The Harp-Weaver ()
  • We shall hardly notice in a year or two. / You can get accustomed to anything.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Spring Song," The Harp-Weaver ()
  • I drank at every vine. / The last was like the first. / I came upon no wine / So wonderful as thirst.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Feast," The Harp-Weaver ()
  • Music my rampart, and my only one.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven," The Buck in the Snow ()
  • Sweet sounds, oh, beautiful music, do not cease!

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "On Hearing a Symphony of Beethoven," The Buck in the Snow ()
  • Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Dirge Without Music," The Buck in the Snow ()
  • 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.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Dirge Without Music," The Buck in the Snow ()
  • Life has no friend ...

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • title poem, Fatal Interview ()
  • Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink / Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; / Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink ...

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Love Is Not All," Fatal Interview ()
  • Women are / Superior to men in every way, / But chiefly in the intellect.

  • Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • poem title, Wine From These Grapes ()
  • I dread no more the first white in my hair, / Or even age itself, the easy shoe, / The cane, the wrinkled hands, the special chair: / Time, doing this to me, may alter too / My sorrow, into something I can bear.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Time," Wine From These Grapes ()
  • I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Conscientious Objector" (1917), Wine From These Grapes ()
  • Man has never been the same since God died.

  • Time does not forfeit; Time does not abstain; / The future in one fist, he eats the past. / I know this; yet again and yet again / I try to hold the present, make it last / One moment, that the simple great be slain / Not unperceived. No hope — Time eats so fast.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "From a Town in a State of Siege," Huntsman, What Quarry? ()
  • That chill is in the air / Which the wise know well, and even have learned to bear. / This joy, I know, / Will soon be under snow.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Not So Far As the Forest," Huntsman, What Quarry? ()
  • Set the foot down with distrust upon the crust of the world — it is thin.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Underground System," Huntsman, What Quarry? ()
  • All will be well, we say; it is a habit, like the rising of the sun, / For our country to prosper; who can prevail against us? No one.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Underground System," Huntsman, What Quarry? ()
  • Parrots, tortoises and redwoods / Live a longer life than men do, / Men a longer life than dogs do, / Dogs a longer life than love does.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Pretty Love, I Must Outlive You," Huntsman, What Quarry? ()
  • There are no islands any more.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • poem title, Make Bright the Arrows ()
  • 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?

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "We Have Gone Too Far," Collected Poems ()
  • Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1913, in Allan Ross Macdougall, ed., Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay ()
  • Please don't think me negligent or rude. I am both, in effect, of course, but please don't think me either.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1920, in Allan Ross Macdougall, ed., Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay ()
  • ... without music I should wish to die.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1920, in Allan Ross Macdougall, ed., Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay ()
  • I find that I never lose Bach. I don't know why I have always loved him so. Except that he is so pure, so relentless and incorruptible, like a principle of geometry.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1920, in Allan Ross Macdougall, ed., Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay ()
  • Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the day-time, and falling into at night. I miss you like hell.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1920, in Allan Ross Macdougall, ed., Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay ()
  • I am all the time talking about you, and bragging, to one person or another. I am like the Ancient Mariner, who had a tale in his heart he must unfold to all. I am always button-holing somebody and saying, 'Someday you must meet my mother.' And then I am off. And nothing stops me till the waiters close up the café. I do love you so much, my mother. ... If I didn't keep calling you mother, anybody reading this would think I was writing to my sweetheart. And he would be quite right.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1921, in Allan Ross Macdougall, ed., Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay ()
  • Do you suppose, when you and I are dead, dear, they will publish the Love Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay and Her Mother?

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1921, in Allan Ross Macdougall, ed., Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay ()
  • I find it's as hard to live down an early triumph as an early indiscretion ...

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1922, in Allan Ross Macdougall, ed., Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay ()
  • A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down ... Kathleen is about to publish a book. If it's a good book, nothing can harm her. If it's a bad book, nothing can help her.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1927, in Allan Ross Macdougall, ed., Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay ()
  • I am not at all in favor of hard work for its own sake; many people who work very hard indeed produce terrible things, and should most certainly not be encouraged.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1927, in Allan Ross Macdougall, ed., Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay ()
  • I am not a tentative person. Whatever I do, I give up my whole self to it ...

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1927, in Allan Ross Macdougall, ed., Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay ()
  • Ladies: I have received from you recently several communications, inviting me to be your Guest of Honor at a function to take place in Washington some time this month. I replied, not only that I was unable to attend, but that I regretted this inability; I said that I was sensible to the honor you did me, and that I hoped you would invite me again. Your recent gross and shocking insolence to one of the most distinguished writers of our time has changed all that. It is not in the power of an organization which has insulted Elinor Wylie, to honor me. And indeed I should feel it unbecoming on my part, to sit as Guest of Honor in a gathering of writers, where honor is tendered not so much for the excellence of one's literary accomplishment as for the circumspection of one's personal life. Believe me, if the eminent object of your pusillanimous attack has not directed her movements in conformity with your timid philosophies, no more have I mine. I too am eligible for your disesteem. Strike me too from your lists, and permit me, I beg you, to share with Elinor Wylie a brilliant exile from your fusty province.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1927, in Allan Ross Macdougall, ed., Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay ()
  • It's not true that life is one damn thing after another — it's one damn thing over and over ...

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1930, in Allan Ross Macdougall, ed., Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay ()
  • ... it may be said of me by Harper & Brothers, that although I reject their proposals, I welcome their advances.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1948, in Allan Ross Macdougall, ed., Letters of Edna St. Vincent Millay ()
  • Oh, you mean I'm a homosexual! Of course I am, and heterosexual too, but what's that got to do with my headache?

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • replying to psychoanalyst who asked if she was aware of "an occasional impulse toward a person of your own sex," in Jean Gould, The Poet and Her Book ()
  • Evil alone has oil for every wheel.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • untitled poem, Mine the Harvest ()
  • Oh sovereign angel, / Wide winged stranger above a forgetful earth, / Care for me, care for me. Keep me unaware of danger / And not regretful / And not forgetful of my innocent birth.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • untitled poem, Mine the Harvest ()
  • The younger generation forms a country of its own. It has no geographical boundaries. I've talked with young Hungarians in Budapest, with young Italians in Rome, with young Frenchmen in Paris, and with young people all over. ... These young people are going to do things. They are going to change things.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1911, in Nancy Milford, Savage Beauty ()
  • Sweep the floor, and sweep it again tomorrow and the day after tomorrow and the day after that and every day of your life; — if not that floor, why then — some other floor.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • 1911, in Nancy Milford, Savage Beauty ()
  • Although we sometimes did without a few of life's necessities, we rarely lacked for its luxuries.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay
  • Whether or not we find what we are seeking / Is idle, biologically speaking.

    • Edna St. Vincent Millay,
    • "Four Sonnets," A Few Figs From Thistles ()

Edna St. Vincent Millay, U.S. poet, playwright, Pulitzer Prize winner

(1892 - 1950)

Edna St. Vincent Millay Boissevain also wrote her prose under the name Nancy Boyd.