Edna St. Vincent Millay Poems

Don't forget to view our Edna St. Vincent Millay home page with links to biographical information, articles, and more poems that may not be listed here.

• Best Edna St. Vincent Millay Poems
• Edna St Vincent Millay Quotes

---

 I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 (On reflecting that the world 
 is ready to go to war again)

Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out.
Breed faster, crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build 
 bombing airplanes;
Make speeches, unveil statues, issue bonds, parade;
Convert again into explosives the bewildered ammonia 
and the distracted cellulose;
Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies
The hopeful bodies of the young; exhort,
Pray, pull long...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 I

I had forgotten how the frogs must sound
After a year of silence, else I think
I should not so have ventured forth alone
At dusk upon this unfrequented road.

II

I am waylaid by Beauty. Who will walk
Between me and the crying of the frogs?
Oh, savage Beauty, suffer me to pass,
That am a timid woman, on her way
From one house to another!...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 This door you might not open, and you did; 
 So enter now, and see for what slight thing 
You are betrayed... Here is no treasure hid, 
 No cauldron, no clear crystal mirroring 
The sought-for truth, no heads of women slain 
 For greed like yours, no writhings of distress, 
But only what you see... Look yet again—
...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 It was not like your great and gracious ways! 
Do you, that have naught other to lament, 
Never, my Love, repent 
Of how, that July afternoon, 
You went,
With sudden, unintelligible phrase, 
And frighten'd eye, 
Upon your journey of so many days 
Without a single kiss, or a good-bye? 
I knew, indeed, that you were parting soon; 
And so we...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 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;

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.

Always before about my dooryard,
Marking the reach of the...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 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...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

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...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 IV

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....Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 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!—

Sharp, unfamiliar odors have destroyed
Each other room's dear personality.
The heavy scent of damp, funereal flowers,—
The very essence, hush-distilled, of Death—
Has strangled that habitual breath of home
Whose expiration leaves all houses dead;
And...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 Read by the poet at The Public Ceremonial of The Naional Institute 
of Arts and Letters at Carnegie Hall, New York, January 18th, 1941.

Great Muse, that from this hall absent for long
Hast never been, 
Great Muse of Song,
Colossal Muse of mighty Melody,
Vocal Calliope,
With thine august and contrapuntal brow
And thy vast throat builded for Harmony,
For the strict monumental pure design,
And...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 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?
Marigolds around the step
 And rosemary stand,
And then comes Sorrow—
 And what does Sorrow care
For the rosemary
 Or the marigolds there?
Am I kin to Sorrow?
 Are we kin?
That so oft upon my door—
 Oh, come in!...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 Aye, but she?
Your other sister and my other soul
Grave Silence, lovelier
Than the three loveliest maidens, what of her?
Clio, not you,
Not you, Calliope,
Nor all your wanton line,
Not Beauty's perfect self shall comfort me
For Silence once departed,
For her the cool-tongued, her the tranquil-hearted,
Whom evermore I follow wistfully,
Wandering Heaven and Earth and Hell and the four seasons through;
Thalia, not you,
Not you, Melpomene,
Not...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 All I could see from where I stood
Was three long mountains and a wood;
I turned and looked another way,
And saw three islands in a bay.
So with my eyes I traced the line 
Of the horizon, thin and fine,
Straight around till I was come
Back to where I'd started from; 
And all I saw from where I stood
Was three long mountains...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 "Son," said my mother,
When I was knee-high,
"you've need of clothes to cover you,
and not a rag have I.

"There's nothing in the house
To make a boy breeches,
Nor shears to cut a cloth with,
Nor thread to take stitches.

"There's nothing in the house
But a loaf-end of rye,
And a harp with a woman's head
Nobody will buy,"
And she began to cry.

That was in the...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 There it was I saw what I shall never forget
And never retrieve.
Monstrous and beautiful to human eyes, hard to
 believe,
He lay, yet there he lay,
Asleep on the moss, his head on his polished cleft
 small ebony hoves,
The child of the doe, the dappled child of the deer.

Surely his mother had never said, "Lie here
Till I return," so spotty and...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 And what are you that, wanting you,
I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
With weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you,
As many days as crawl
I should be listening to the wind
And looking at the wall?

I know a man that's a braver man
And twenty men as kind,
And what are you, that you should be
The...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 "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,—
Aye, from thy glutted lash, glad, crawled away,
As if spent...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 I should like to rise and go 
Where the golden apples grow;-- 
Where below another sky 
Parrot islands anchored lie, 
And, watched by cockatoos and goats, 
Lonely Crusoes building boats;-- 
Where in sunshine reaching out 
Eastern cities, miles about, 
Are with mosque and minaret 
Among sandy gardens set, 
And the rich goods from near and far 
Hang for sale...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---

 I cannot but remember
 When the year grows old—
October—November—
 How she disliked the cold!

She used to watch the swallows
 Go down across the sky,
And turn from the window
 With a little sharp sigh.

And often when the brown leaves
 Were brittle on the ground,
And the wind in the chimney
 Made a melancholy sound,

She had a look about her
 That I...Read more of this...

by St. Vincent Millay, Edna

---