Poems - Edna St Vincent Millay

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

One of America’s most beloved poets, Edna St. Vincent Millay burst onto the literary scene at a very young age and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923. Her passionate lyrics and superbly crafted sonnets have thrilled generations of readers long after the notoriously bohemian lifestyle she led in Greenwich Village in the 1920s ceased to shock them. Millay’s refreshing frankness and cynicism and her ardent appetite for life still burn brightly on the page more than half a century after her death.

This volume includes the early poems that many consider her best— “Renascence” and “The Ballad of the Harp Weaver” among them—as well as such often-memorized favorites as “What lips my lips have kissed” and “First Fig” (“My candle burns at both ends . . .”). The poet’s most famous verse drama, the one-act antiwar fable Aria da Capo, is included here as well.

Genres: Poetry, Classics, Queer, LGBT, Womens, American, 20th Century

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1923

About the author

Edna St. Vincent Millay was an American lyrical poet and playwright. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1923, the third woman to win the award for poetry, and was also known for her feminist activism and her many love affairs. She used the pseudonym Nancy Boyd for her prose work.

This famous portrait of Vincent (as she was called by friends) was taken by Carl Van Vechten in 1933.

Reviews

[Dana Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Millay’s brain is so large. The way she talks about love is unparalleled. Nobody else should even try to write sonnets anymore, she’s already done it but better.

Her strength really lies in her use of metre and rhyme, which further accentuates the beauty of anything she’s trying to say. It’s no wonder that she won a Pulitzer.

Overall this is an excellent collection of her poetry, but there were a loooooooot of nature poems which I just personally don’t vibe with, hence only 4 stars and not 5. I adored it, though, and Millay truly is That Bitch.

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Edna St. Vincent Millay

It's hard to avoid superlatives.
Edna St. Vincent Millay is without any doubts one of America's greatest poets. Everyone should read her poetry...even people who don't read poetry will enjoy Millay.

Everyman's Pocket Poets

I have a few of Everyman's Pocket Poets collections. Rabbie Burns, Edgar Allen Poe, Yeats and of course Edna St. Vincent Millay. I love them. They are proper pocket editions (smaller than a Kindle) that you can take with you anywhere and they are attractive. They're kind of perfect.

[Caleb Loh · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand / Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand”

[Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

"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"

[Eve Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some melancholy, some gay, some silly, some serious. An excellent collection by an amazingly talented lady who won my heart a few years ago when I came upon a poem by her and was swept off my feet.
Here are just a few snippets, I realize that there seems to be a theme in these but I seriously just picked some of my favourite lines or there.

"--People dress and go to town;
I sit in my chair.
All my thoughts are slow and brown:
Standing up or sitting down
Little matters, or what gown
Or what shoes I wear."

"--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!"

"--But here, unhated for an hour,
The sorrel runs in ragged flame,
The daisy stands, a bastard flower,
Like flowers that bear an honest name."

"--I know a winter when it comes:
The leaves are listless on the boughs;
I watched your love a little while,
And brought my plants into the house."

"---And then adieu, - farewell! - the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The color and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set."

"--Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will,
Call me in all things what I was before,
A flutter in the wind, a woman still;
I tell you I am what I was and more."

[steph · Rating 5 out of 5]

This volume starts with 'Renascence' and it was in reading that poem that I discovered what is now my favourite poem. It made me cry.

Millay's poems are just so fun to read, they definitely made poetry far less intimidating then it appeared to me previously. What follows is a whole selection of poems containing the most delightful rhyming couplets and little dittys. Some deep, some light, all of them bursting with wit.

I wasn't taken as much by the sonnets but I think that's only because I love an easy and obvious rhyme. That said, I really enjoyed the play Millay wrote, Aria Da Capo, and thought it was such a lovely way for this volume to end.

Throughout much of the volume, Millay makes fun of all of us, reminding us that the grass is always greener in the most entertaining way that you can't help but get a kick out of yourself.

[Eilidh Fyfe · Rating 5 out of 5]

i am drunk and this was intensely lovely

[B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent selection of Millay's poetry.

Here's one of her quotes that I relate to: "I love humanity; but I hate people."

And one of her poems:

Sorrow

Sorrow like a ceaseless rain
Beats upon my heart.
People twist and scream in pain, -
Dawn will find them still again;
This has neither wax nor wane,
Neither stop nor start.

People dress and go to town;
I sit in my chair.
All my thoughts are slow and brown:
Standing up or sitting down
Little matters, or what gown
Or what shoes I wear.

[Δημήτριος Καραγιάννης · Rating 4 out of 5]

Millay cannot find enough words to describe the purity and density of the feeling of love. But she has done her best, and her best is magnificent, vivid and colorful. The poems included carry the insufferable joy and pleasant weight of yearning and love, and will be much enjoyed by enthusiasts of the genre.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I Dreamed I Moved Among The Elysian Fields

I dreamed I moved among the Elysian fields,
In converse with sweet women long since dead;
And out of blossoms which that meadow yields
I wove a garland for your living head.
Danai, that was the vessel for a day
Of golden Jove, I saw, and at her side,
Whom Jove the Bull desired and bore away,
Europa stood, and the Swan's featherless bride.
All these were mortal women, yet all these
Above the ground had had a god for guest;
Freely I walked beside them and at ease,
Addressing them, by them again addressed,
And marveled nothing, for remembering you,
Wherefore I was among them well I knew.

[CaitlynK · Rating 5 out of 5]

I walked past Millay's house in Greenwich Village over the summer, and diligently read the plaque, but forgot to then go read anything of hers. Remedying that in a Barnes & Noble, I was encouraged by an enthusiastic clerk, who said Millay is one of her favorite poets. I can see why, and will be finding more of her work in the future.

She also appears to have translated an edition of Baudelaire's Flowers of Evil, and that intrigues me.

[Noelle VanVleet · Rating 5 out of 5]

When a note is played and a nearby object reflects or vibrates the sound, we call it resonance.

When I read the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, I can feel my soul hum along.

[morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

after reading this, Millay has become my favourite poet.

[Jennifer Strong · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so impressed with many of her poems. Maybe my favorite poet?

[Come Musica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Centellinato…

[JCJBergman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought I'd update my review of this little book of poems by Edna Millay. Upon re-reading this piece I am left riveted but warmly comforted. Millay's poems are deeply existential but colourfully hopeful - a combination rarely to be found, I find. She offers no false consolation, merely flowering reality where it can be made so with apt poetic justification. Millay is by far the best poet I've ever read, and I hope, yes hope, that I have forgotten the verses and lines upon revisiting once again in the future to keep them as fresh and unrelenting as they were when they were first read.

You may enjoy my narration of my personal favourite poem of hers; "Renascence" over on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww66u...

[Toni Cox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful sarcasm, wit, and feminism. Found myself doubting whether she really lived a hundred years ago. She could have written for SNL. Check out the poem about her not caring if her ex died, had he, she would have been more interested in the cleaning of her fur coat (a different dead carcass). However she wrote it ever so nicely.

[Katie Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

Millay is a gut punch wrapped in silver, and I love her for it.

[Lin S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been reading this throughout the year. There are times when just a little poetry is comforting.

[Violet Baudelaire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Luminosa e fantasmagorica…

[electrickerrain · Rating 5 out of 5]

My heart is what it was before,
A house where people come and go.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been slowly trying to cultivate a love of poetry and Edna St. Vincent Millay won me over. She writes often about death and love and loss, but there are a few sprinklings of delightful, funny poems too. Here are a few of my favorites:

AFTERNOON ON A HILL
I will be the gladdest thing
Under the sun!
I will touch a hundred flowers
And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds
With quiet eyes,
Watch the wind bow down the grass,
And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show
Up from the town,
I will mark which must be mine,
And then start down!
p38

II
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!
p56

FIRST FIG
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!

SECOND FIG
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!
p63

SONG OF SECOND APRIL
April this year, not otherwise
Than April of a year ago,
Is full of whispers, full of sighs,
Of dazzling mud and dingy snow;
Hepaticas that please you so
Are here again, and butterflies.

These rings a hammering all day,
And shingles lie about the doors;
In orchards near and far away
The grey wood-pecker taps and bores;
The men are merry at their chores,
And children earnest at their play.

The larger streams run still and deep,
Noise 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.
p114

INLAND
People that build their houses inland,
People that buy a plot of ground
Shaped like a house, and build a house there,
Far from the sea-board, far from the sound

Of water sucking the hollow ledges,
Tons of water striking the shore, -
What do they long for, as I long for
One salt smell of the sea once more?

People the waves have not awakened,
Spanking the boats at the harbor's head,
What do they long for, as I long for, -
Starting up in my inland bed,

Beating the narrow walls, and fining
Neither a window nor a door,
Screaming to God for death by drowning, -
One salt taste of the sea once more?
p123

IV
Only until this cigarette is ended,
A little moment at the end of all,
While on the floor the quiet ashes fall,
And in the firelight to a lance extended,
Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended,
The broken shadow dances on a wall,
I will permit my memory to recall
The vision of you, by all my dreams attended.
And then adieu, - farewell! - the dream is done.
Yours is a face of which I can forget
The color and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet;
But in your day this moment is the sun
Upon a hill, after the sun has set.
p158

VIII
And you as well must die, beloved dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead
Than the first leaf that fell, - this wonder fled.
Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.
Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.
In spite of all my love, you will arise
Upon that day and wander down the air
Obscurely as the unattended flower,
It mattering not how beautiful you were.
Or how beloved above all else that dies.
p162

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was quite delightful, not to mention gripping from the very start. The flap suggests her early poems are better than her later, with which assessment I’d be inclined to agree. She is an accurate mouthpiece of that weird early twentieth century feeling of not quite being modern but not quite being not, either, which is present in the clear struggle she has with religion and belief in God. The poems about suicide and hell (particularly the ones where she’s saving a flower from the apocalypse, and searching the afterlife for Silence) are remarkable.

The only critique I have is that her form is somewhat wanting. I find the sonnets (although there are a few in my faves) to be the most lacking and airless. Then again, after Auden, everyone is lacking.

Renascence
The world stands out on either side
No wider than the heart is wide;

and

The soul can split the sky in two,
And let the face of God shine through.
But East and West will pinch the heart
That cannot keep them pushed apart;
And he whose soul is flat – the sky
Will cave in on him by and by.

Interim
So short a time
To teach my life its transposition to
This difficult and unaccustomed key! –
The room is as you left it; your last touch –
A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself
As saintly – hallows now each simple thing

and

I think our heart-strings were, like warp and woof
In some firm fabric, woven in and out;
Your golden filaments in fair design
Across my duller fibre. And today
The shining strip is rent; the exquisite
Fine pattern is destroyed; part of your heart
Aches in my breast; part of my heart lies chilled
In the damp earth with you. I have been torn
In two, and suffer for the rest of me.

The Suicide
But as for tasks –” he smiled, and shook his head;
“Thou hadst thy tast, and laidst it by,” he said.

OUCH.

The Tavern
But all the good I know
Was taught me out of two grey eyes
A long time ago.

To Kathleen
Beauty that may not die as long
As there are flowers and you and song.

The Philosopher
I know a man that’s a braver man
And twenty men as kind,
And what are you, that you should be
The one man in my mind?

Yet women’s ways are witless ways,
As any sage will tell. –
And what am I, that I should love
So wisely and so well?

Shades of Dorothy Parker!

Lament
Life must go on,
And the dead be forgotten;
Life must go on,
Though good men die;
Anne, eat your breakfast;
Dan, take your medicine;
Life must go on;
I forget just why.

And again.

Exiled
Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
Of the big surf that breaks all day.

Spring
Life it 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.

The Blue-Flag in the Bog
Held Earth naught to save souls of sinners
Worth the saving from a fire?

Elegy before Death
Oh, there will pass with your great passing
Little of beauty not your own, -
Only the light from common water,
Only the grace from simple stone!

Favourites: Witch Wife; First Fig; Second Fig; The Singing Woman from the Wood’s Edge; Sonnet II; Weeds; To a poet that died young; Wraith; Ebb; Sonnet V; Sonnet VII; I know I am but summer to your heart; What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why.

[Rebekka Istrail · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this collection, some poems last for pages; some consist of a few lines. Millay usually uses both rhythm and rhyme, which I love, as the lines ring in my ears and lock into place cleverly like puzzle pieces. I had forgotten that among her body of work are sonnets--which are both intelligent and hot-blooded, which give a kick if you set your mind to them. My favorite Millay poem is unusual for her in that it is free-verse. If you have not read Spring, please do.

Why I enjoy Millay's poetry, in sum: In life, perception is not always candy-coated. Life can feel raw. It helps to have language to think through these times.

On a carefree day, it can be hard to read and feel the weight of some of these poems. On an intense day, for me it is hard to find a peer to Millay as an emotional travel guide. She skillfully uses language to express wildness, giving it form, meaning, and beauty.

[James Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly lovely writing by an anarchistic, sensitive and daring soul. The finest poems here are simple and yet so haunting as to gather your soul into the life of her moments and leave you there. Some fine writing but it is the tattoos of the soul that EstVM outlines- the permanent images we carry within.

[Elsie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Millay always shines with her poetry. Even though not every poem in this collection is my taste I feel like her voice remains strong and consistent. She makes me want to try rhyming couplets in my own work ahah. If you like poetry it’s worth checking out Millay and this collection should be easy to get your hands on.

[Catherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

These were hit or miss for me. The hits really hit (renascence, Grown ups, song of a second April, the unexplorer, the ballad of the harp weaver) but the misses really missed; they were mind ambling like reading the mad hatter poetry/plays.

[Savannah Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate to give only three stars, but I found most of the prose very hard to follow. Mainly due to her use of irregular rhyme scheme and abstract themes. Regardless, Millay has a beautiful mind. The play at the end has me thoroughly confused.

[Holly]

I really liked a few of the poems, but I still only read about 1/4 of it. Like short stories, a poetry anthology doesn't seem to be a format that holds my attention. Advice for changing this is welcome!

[Siobhán Mc Laughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A perfect compilation of Edna St Vincent Millay's best poems, which are beguiling and beautiful.