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“Sweeter was loss than silver coins to spend,
Sweeter was famine than the belly filled;
Better than blood in the vein was the blood spilled;
Better than corn and healthy flocks to tend
And a tight roof and acres without end
Was the barn burned and the mild creatures killed,
And the back aging fast, and all to build:
For then it was, his neighbour was his friend.
Then for a moment the averted eye
Was turned upon him with benignant beam,
Defiance faltered, and derision slept;
He saw as in a not unhappy dream
The kindly heads against the horrid sky,
And scowled, and cleared his throat and spat, and wept.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Sonnets

“I bleed, but know not wherefore, know not where.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Poems

“As to some lovely temple, tenantless
Long since, that once was sweet with shivering brass,
Knowing well its altars ruined and the grass
Grown up between the stones, yet from excess
Of grief hard driven, or great loneliness,
The worshiper returns, and those who pass
Marvel him crying on a name that was,—
So is it now with me in my distress.
Your body was a temple to Delight;
Cold are its ashes whence the breath is fled;
Yet here one time your spirit was wont to move;
Here might I hope to find you day or night;
And here I come to look for you, my love,
Even now, foolishly, knowing you are dead.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay, Collected Sonnets

“Just tell me what you saw this morning like in two ines. I saw a water glass on a brown tablecloth, and the light came through it in three places. No metaphor. And to resist a metaphor is very difficult because you have to actually endure the thing itself, which hurts us for some reason.”
― Marie Howe