Edna St. Vincent Millay

Author

1892-02-22

Quotes by Edna St. Vincent Millay

• I do not think there is a woman in whom the roots of passion shoot deeper than in me.

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• The mind, at length bereftOf 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 earCan say, The thrush was here!Can say, His song was clear!Can live, before it die.

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• I know not how such things can be;I only know there came to meA fragrance such as never clingsTo aught save happy living things;A sound as of some joyous elfSinging sweet songs to please himself,And, through and over everything,A sense of glad awakening.The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,Whispering to me I could hear;I felt the rain's cool finger-tipsBrushed tenderly across my lips,Laid gently on my sealed sight,And all at once the heavy nightFell from my eyes and I could see!— A drenched and dripping apple-tree,A last long line of silver rain,A sky grown clear and blue again.And as I looked a quickening gustOf wind blew up to me and thrustInto my face a miracleOf orchard-breath, and with the smell,— I know not how such things can be!— I breathed my soul back into me.

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• Lie down beside these watersThat bubble from the spring;Hear in the desert silenceThe desert sparrow sing;Draw from the shapeless momentSuch pattern as you can;And cleave henceforth to Beauty;Expect no more from man.Man, with his ready answer,His sad and hearty word,For every cause in limbo,For every debt deferred,For every pledge forgotten,His eloquent and grimDeep empty gaze upon you,— Expect no more from him.

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• I, being born a woman and distressedBy all the needs and notions of my kind,Am urged by your propinquity to findYour person fair, and feel a certain zestTo 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 treasonOf my stout blood against my staggering brain,I shall remember you with love, or seasonMy scorn with pity, - let me make it plain:I find this frenzy insufficient reasonFor conversation when we meet again.

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• Degraded bird, I give you back your eyes forever, ascend now whither you are tossed;Forsake this wrist, forsake this rhyme;Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost,But climb.

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• I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death.

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• When this book is mould,And a book of manyWaiting to be soldFor a casual penny,In a little open case,In a street unclean and cluttered,Where a heavy mud is spatteredFrom the passing drays,Stranger, pause and look;From the dust of agesLift this little book,Turn the tattered pages,Read me, do not let me die!Search the fading letters, findingSteadfast in the broken bindingAll that once was I!

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• A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down.

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• A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.

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• Moon, that against the lintel of the westYour 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 hillWhere 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 mindRecall some sweet employment, pity me,That even now the dawn's dim herald see!I charge you, goddess, in the name of oneYou loved as well: endure, hold off the sun.

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• Still must the poet as of old,In barren attic bleak and cold,Starve, freeze, and fashion verses toSuch things as flowers and song and you;Still as of old his being giveIn Beauty's name, while she may live,Beauty that may not die as longAs there are flowers and you and song.

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• And all at once the heavy nightFell from my eyes and I could see, --A drenched and dripping apple-tree,A last long line of silver rain,A sky grown clear and blue again.And as I looked a quickening gustOf wind blew up to me and thrustInto my face a miracleOf orchard-breath, and with the smell, --I know not how such things can be! --I breathed my soul back into me.Ah! Up then from the ground sprang IAnd hailed the earth with such a cryAs is not heard save from a manWho 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

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• Now goes under, and I watch it go under, the sunThat will not rise again.Today has seen the setting, in your eyes cold and senseless as the sea,Of friendship better than bread, and of bright charityThat lifts a man a little above the beasts that run.That this could be!That I should live to seeMost vulgar Pride, that stale obstreperous clown,So fitted out with purple robe and crownTo stand among his betters! Face to faceWith outraged me in this once holy place,Where Wisdom was a favoured guest and huntedTruth was harboured out of danger,He bulks enthroned, a lewd, an insupportable stranger!I would have sworn, indeed I swore it:The hills may shift, the waters may decline,Winter may twist the stem from the twig that bore it,But never your love from me, your hand from mine.Now goes under the sun, and I watch it go under.Farewell, sweet light, great wonder!You, too, farewell,-but fare not well enough to dreamYou have done wisely to invite the night before the darkness came.

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• And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with youall 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?

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• 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.

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• I will come back to you, I swear I will;And you will know me still.I shall be only a little tallerThan when I went.

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• 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.

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• Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would noteIn 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....

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• Catch from the board of beauty/ Such careless crumbs as fall.

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