Edna St. Vincent Millay Quotes

The undercurrent of my every thought:
To seek you, find you, have you for my own.

The breath of dying lilies haunted the twilight air.

Music, my rampart and my only one.

I love humanity but I hate people.

Many a bard's untimely death Lends unto his verses breath; Here's a song was never sung: Growing old is dying young.

Down, down, down into the darkness of the grave
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender, the kind;
Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.

Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it. (in a letter written while she was in college)

I bleed, but know not wherefore, know not where.

Life must go on; I forget just why.

We were so wholly one I had not thought
That we could die apart. I had not thought
That I could move, — and you be stiff and still!
That I could speak, — and you perforce be dumb!
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.

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! —

Now by the Path I Climbed, I Journey Back

Now by the path I climbed, I journey back.
The oaks have grown; I have been long away.
Taking with me your memory and your lack
I now descend into a milder day;
Stripped of your love, unburdened of my hope,
Descend the path I mounted from the plain;
Yet steeper than I fancied seems the slope
And stonier, now that I go down again.
Warm falls the dusk; the clanking of a bell
Faintly ascends upon this heavier air;
I do recall those grassy pastures well:
In early spring they drove the cattle there.
And close at hand should be a shelter, too,
From which the mountain peaks are not in view.

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.

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
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

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 !