Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes & Sayings

Longing alone is singer to the lute. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I avoid the looming visitor,
Flee him adroitly around corners,
Hating him, wishing him well;

Lest if he confront me I be forced to say what is in no wise true:
That he is welcome; that I am unoccupied;
And forced to sit while the potted roses wilt in the crate or the sonnet cools

Bending a respectful nose above such dried philosophies
As have hung in wreaths from the rafters of my house since I was a child.

Some trace of kindliness in this, no doubt,
There may be.
But not enough to keep a bird alive.

There is a flaw amounting to a fissure
In such behaviour. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

But she was not made for any man, and she will never be all mine. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Searching my heart for its true sorrow, This is the thing I find to be: That I am weary of words and people, Sick of the city, wanting the sea. — 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

Hard, hard it is, this anxious autumn
To lift the heavy mind from its dark forebodings; — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Into each dance must be packed the panic and ecstasy of her last moment of life, for underneath was death. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

It's not love's going hurts my days
But that it went in little ways. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I know what my heart is like Since your love died: It is like a hollow ledge Holding a little pool Left there by the tide, A little tepid pool, Drying inward from the edge. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Ah, drink again This river that is the taker-away of pain, And the giver-back of beauty! In these cool waves What can be lost?
Only the sorry cost Of the lovely thing, ah, never the thing itself! The level flood that laves The hot brow And the stiff shoulder Is at our temples now. Gone is the fever, But not into the river; Melted the frozen pride, But the tranquil tide Runs never the warmer for this, Never the colder. Immerse the dream. Drench the kiss. Dip the song in the stream. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Not for the flag Of any land because myself was born there Will I give up my life. But I will love that land where man is free, And that will I defend. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Blessed be Death, that cuts in marble What would have sunk to dust! — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Heart, have no pity on this house of bone:
Shake it with dancing, break it down with joy. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I do believe the most of me
Floats under water; and men see
Above the wave a jagged small
Mountain of ice, and that is all.
Only the depths of other peaks

May know my substance when it speaks,
And steadfast through the grinding jam
Remain aware of what I am.
Myself, I think, shall never know
How far beneath the wave I go. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Moon, that against the lintel of the west
Your forehead lean until the gate be swung,
Longing to leave the world and be at rest,
Being worn with faring and no longer young,
Do you recall at all the Carian hill
Where worn with loving, loving late you lay,
Halting the sun because you lingered still,
While wondering candles lit the Carian day?
Ah, if indeed this memory to your mind
Recall some sweet employment, pity me,
That even now the dawn's dim herald see!
I charge you, goddess, in the name of one
You loved as well: endure, hold off the sun. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Time Does Not Bring Relief
Time does not bring relief; you all have lied
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, - so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sonnet IV"

I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of spring.

Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I am waylaid by beauty. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

When We That Wore the Myrtle Wear the Dust

When we that wore the myrtle wear the dust,
And years of darkness cover up our eyes,
And all our arrogant laughter and sweet lust
Keep counsel with the scruples of the wise;
When boys and girls that now are in the loins
Of croaking lads, dip oar into the sea, -
And who are these that dive for copper coins?
No longer we, my love, no longer we -
Then let the fortunate breathers of the air,
When we lie speechless in the muffling mould,
Tease not our ghosts with slander, pause not there
To say that love is false and soon grows cold,
But pass in silence the mute grave of two
Who lived and died believing love was true. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,
And knew his hunger as my own. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I shall think of you
Whenever I am most happy, whenever I am Most sad, whenever I see a beautiful thing.
You are a burning lamp to me, a flame
The wind cannot blow out, and I shall hold you High in my hand against whatever darkness. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I hate people but I love gatherings. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

If ever I said in grief or pride, I'd tired of honest things, I lied. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

For men that are afraid to die
Must warm their hands before a lie;
The fire that's built of What is Known
Will chill the marrow in the bone. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

For the body at best
Is a bundle of aches,
Longing for rest;
It cries when it wakes. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Englishman foxtrots as he fox-hunts, with all his being, through thickets, through ditches, over hedges, through chiffons, through waiters, over saxophones, to the victorious finish; and who goes home depends on how many the ambulance will accommodate. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

But the rain Is full of ghosts tonight — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Upon This Age, That Never Speaks Its Mind

Upon this age, that never speaks its mind,
This furtive age, this age endowed with power
To wake the moon with footsteps, fit an oar
Into the rowlocks of the wind, and find
What swims before his prow, what swirls behind -
Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined.
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun; but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric; undefiled
Proceeds pure Science, and has her say; but still
Upon this world from the collective womb
Is spewed all day the red triumphant child. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

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. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

This book, when I am dead, will be A little faint perfume of me. People who knew me well will say, She really used to think that way. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I drank at every vine, the last was like the first. I came upon no wine so wonderful as thirst. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Guess I'll weep awhile. Guess I won't, I mean. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Over these things I could not see;
These were the things that bounded me;
And I could touch them with my hand,
Almost, I thought, from where I stand.
And all at once things seemed so small
My breath came short, and scarce at all. — 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

There is no God.
But it does not matter.
Man is enough. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Youth, have no pity; leave no farthing here For age to invest in compromise and fear. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I make bean stalks, I'm A builder, like yourself. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Death devours all lovely things. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

The mind, at length bereft
Of thinking and its pain,
Will soon disperse again,
And nothing will remain:
No, not a thing be left.

Only the ardent eye,
Only the listening ear
Can say, "The thrush was here!"
Can say, "His song was clear!"
Can live, before it die. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning, but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
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

Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I have loved badly, loved the great Too soon, withdrawn my words too late; And eaten in an echoing hall Alone and from a chipped plate The words that I withdrew too late. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!
Give me back my book and take my kiss instead.
Was it my enemy or my friend I heard,
"What a big book for such a little head!"
Come, I will show you now my newest hat,
And you may watch me purse my mouth and prink!
Oh, I shall love you still, and all of that.
I never again shall tell you what I think.
I shall be sweet and crafty, soft and sly;
You will not catch me reading any more:
I shall be called a wife to pattern by;
And some day when you knock and push the door,
Some sane day, not too bright and not too stormy,
I shall be gone, and you may whistle for me. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

The room is full of you! - As I came in
And closed the door behind me, all at once
A something in the air, intangible,
yet stiff with meaning, struck my senses sick! - — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Ah, I could lay me down in this long grass
And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind
Blow over me — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Euclid Alone Has Looked on Beauty Bare. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

And as it went my tortured soul
(...) That all about me swirled the dust.

Deep in the earth I rested now,
Cool is its hands upon the brow
And soft its breast beneath the head
Of one who is so gladly dead. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

After all my erstwhile dear, my no longer cherished;
Need we say it was not love, just because it perished? — Edna St. Vincent Millay

You wrote me a beautiful letter, I wonder if you meant it to be as beautiful as it was. I think you did; for somehow I know that your feeling for me, however slight it is, is of the nature of love ... When you tell me to come, I will come, by the next train, just as I am. This is not meekness, be assured; I do not come naturally by meekness; know that it is a proud surrender to You. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

The first rose on my rose-tree
Budded, bloomed, and shattered,
During sad days when to me
Nothing mattered.
Grief of grief has drained me clean;
Still it seems a pity
No one saw, - it must have been
Very pretty. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Curse thee, Life, I will live with thee no more! Thou hast mocked me, starved me, beat my body sore! And all for a pledge that was not pledged by me, I have kissed thy crust and eaten sparingly That I might eat again, and met thy sneers With deprecations, and thy blows with tears, ... — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Spring
TO what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Night falls fast.
Today is in the past.
Blown from the dark hill hither to my door
Three flakes, then four
Arrive, then many more. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Man has never been the same since God died. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Beauty in all things-no, we cannot hope for that; but some place set apart for it. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

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. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

A ghost in marble of a girl you knew
Who would have loved you in a day or two. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Here's a song was never sung: Growing old is dying young. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

One things there's no getting by,
I've been a wicked girl,
Says I ...
But, if I can't be sorry I might as well be glad ! — Edna St. Vincent Millay

When we are old and these rejoicing veins
Are frosty channels to a muted stream,
And out of all our burning there remains
No feeblest spark to fire us, even in dream,
This be our solace: that it was not said
When we were young and warm and in our prime,
Upon our couch we lay as lie the dead,
Sleeping away the unreturning time. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

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. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Along my body, waking while I sleep,
Sharp to the kiss, cold to the hand as snow,
The scar of this encounter like a sword — Edna St. Vincent Millay

L 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. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

On and on eternally
Shall your altered fluid run,
Bud and bloom and go to seed;
But your singing days are done — Edna St. Vincent Millay

So up I got in anger, And took a book I had, And put a ribbon on my hair To please a passing lad. And, "One thing there's no getting by
I've been a wicked girl," said I; But if I can't be sorry, why, I might as well be glad! — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Life must go on, Though good men die. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would note
In me a beauty that was never mine,
How first you knew me in a book I wrote,
How first you loved me for a written line ... — Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

I saw at sea a great fog bank
Between two ships that struck and sank;
A thousand screams the heavens smote;
And every scream tore through my throat.
...
A fragrance such as never clings
To aught save happy living things
...
Of wind blew up to me and thrust
Into my face a miracle
Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,
I know not how such things can be!
I breathed my soul back into me. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

11.

If it should rain --(the sneezy moon
Said: Rain)--then I shall hear it soon
From shingles into gutters fall...
And know of what concerns me, all:

The garden will be wet till noon--
I may not walk-- my temper leans
To myths and legends--through the beans
Till they are dried-- lest I should spread
Diseases they have never had.

I hear the rain: it comes down straight.
Now I can sleep, I need not wait
To close the windows anywhere.

Tomorrow, it may be, I might
Do things to set the whole world right.
There's nothing I can do tonight. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Not only under ground are the brains of men Eaten by maggots, Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I shall forget you presently, my dear, So make the most of this, your little day, Your little month, your little half a year, Ere I forget, or die, or move away, And we are done forever; by and by I shall forget you, as I said, but now, If you entreat me with your loveliest lie I will protest you with my favorite vow. I would indeed that love were longer-lived, And vows were not so brittle as they are, But so it is, and nature has contrived To struggle on without a break thus far,
Whether or not we find what we are seeking Is idle, biologically speaking. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Music, my rampart and my only one. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Second Fig
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand! — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I have learned to fail. And I have had my say. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Read History: thus learn how small a space
You may inhabit, nor inhabit long
In crowding Cosmos
in that confined place
Work boldly; build your flimsy barriers strong;
Turn round and round, make warm your nest; among
The other hunting beasts, keep heart and face,
Not to betray the doomed and splendid race
You are so proud of, to which you belong.
For trouble comes to all of us: the rat
Has courage, in adversity, to fight;
But what a shining animal is man,
Who knows, when pain subsides, that is not that,
For worse than that must follow
yet can write
Music; can laugh; play tennis; even plan. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

And reaching up my hand to try, I screamed to feel it touch the sky. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour,
Rains from the sky a meteoric shower
Of facts ... they lie unquestioned, uncombined
Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill
Is daily spun, but there exists no loom
To weave it into fabric. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

If in the moonlight from the silent bough
Suddenly with precision speak your name
The nightingale, be not assured that now
His wing is limed and his wild virtue tame.
Beauty beyond all feathers that have flown
Is free; you shall not hood her to your wrist,
Nor sting her eyes, nor have her for your own
In any fashion; beauty billed and kissed
Is not your turtle; tread her like a dove -
She loves you not; she never heard of love. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Earth does not understand her child,
Who from the loud gregarious town
Returns, depleted and defiled,
To the still woods, to fling him down. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Well, I have lost you; and I lost you fairly;
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish, and men do,
I shall have only good to say of you. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

All my life,
Following Care along the dusty road,
Have I looked back on loveliness and sighed ... — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies. Nobody that matters, that is. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

We think-although of course, now, we very seldom Clearly think- That the other side of War is Peace. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

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. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Song of a Second April
APRIL this year, not otherwise
Than April of a year ago
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Hepaticas that pleased you so
Are here again, and butterflies.
There rings a hammering all day,
And shingles lie about the doors;
From orchards near and far away
The gray wood-pecker taps and bores,
And men are merry at their chores,
And children earnest at their play.
The larger streams run still and deep;
Noisy and swift the small brooks run.
Among the mullein stalks the sheep
Go up the hillside in the sun
Pensively; only you are gone,
You that alone I cared to keep. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I turn away reluctant from your light,
And stand irresolute, a mind undone,
A silly, dazzled thing deprived of sight
From having looked too long upon the sun.
Then is my daily life a narrow room
In which a little while, uncertainly,
Surrounded by impenetrable gloom,
Among familiar things grown strange to me
Making my way, I pause, and feel, and hark,
Till I become accustomed to the dark. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Lord I do fear / Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

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

[on going to Sunday school:] It looks like rain, and I hope it will rain cats and dogs and hammers and pitchforks and silver sugar spoons and hay ricks and paper-covered novels and picture frames and rag carpets and toothpicks and skating rinks and birds of paradise and roof gardens and burdocks and French grammars before Sunday school time. — 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

Am I kin to Sorrow,
That so oft
Falls the knocker of my door -
Neither loud nor soft,
But as long accustomed -
Under Sorrow's hand? — Edna St. Vincent Millay

Life isn't all beer and skittles; few of us have touched a skittle in years. — Edna St. Vincent Millay